52 The Canadian Horticulturist. 



After this trim to balance the head, making the tree as symmetrical as 

 possible. Where the tree has not been trimmed for several years there is often 

 strong new growth here and there through the tree, that unthinking pruners 

 think they must cut. I have noticed that professional pruners around cities and 

 villages, generally make it a point to take out all wood that has a suspicion of 

 newness about it. Now in many instances I think this is wrong. These 

 growths called water sprouts, are efforts of the tree to make up for previous 

 over-pruning, and are a step in the way of keeping up its youth and fruitfulness. 

 One will often see in the old neglected apple tree, a sprout start with health and 

 vigor, and in a few years become a large bearing bough while the older limbs 

 are barren. 



Water sprouts (all vigorous shoots starting from main branches are called 

 by this name) are often in just the right place to balance the tree or to fill a 

 vacancy in the top, and in such places scrupulously preserving them will be an 

 advantage, and if they crowd older growths in a few years, then older branches 

 may be removed to make room. There are instances where apple trees have 

 been pruned on the renewal system, cutting away a portion, each year, so that 

 the entire outer portion of the top is renewed once in six or seven years. Such 

 a course accompanied with high feeding has resulted in great thrift and pro- 

 ductiveness, and there is no doubt room for a good deal of valuable experi- 

 menting along this line. Pears require about the same course as apples, but in 

 rich soilrequire more shortening in. Mr. C. W. Counter, of Toledo, one of the 

 most successful pear growers in Ohio, shortens in more than half the new growth 

 each year. He gives high cultivation and gets a growth about three times as 

 rank as ordinary orchardists, so perhaps there is more need of severe pruning. 

 Cherries require but little pruning, and peaches and plums are generally pruned 

 by shortening in the outside with a view to making a more compact form. 

 There is, however, a difference of opinion in recent years about the desirability 

 of annually shortening in peach trees. With the most persistent efforts to form 

 a symmetrical head, the peach will throw off its lower growth and become 

 spreading and of a form that requires propping, as soon as it begins to bear 

 heavily. This seems to be Nature's way of bringing every portion of the tree 

 out into the sunlight and air, and for the last few years I have left the matter of 

 shaping the top entirely to Nature, pruning only to remove dead wood. All 

 rules have their exceptions, and the almost universal way at the north of prun- 

 ing newly set peach trees does not work as well in the south and south-west. 



The pruning of grape vmes is also in order on any mild winter day. This 

 is generally made a difficult job and few amateurs go at it with any definite idea 

 what the result of their efforts will be. It is really much more difficult to 

 decide just how much to prune a vine upon a house or arbor than one in a 

 vineyard because the latter is kept within certain close limits and pruned by 

 certain rules which are not apt to vary much from the wants of each vine. 



