The Canadian Horticulturist. 89 



PRUNING FRUIT TREES. 



BOUT the first kind of out-door work that the fruit grower finds to do 

 in spring is pruning his trees. As soon as hard freezing weather is 

 past, generally early in March, in Western New York, the fruit 

 grower should examine his fruit trees to see if they need pruning. 

 It is claimed by experts that where a tree is properly attended to 

 every year from the time it is transplanted, it will rarely require the 

 use of saw or hatchet, as no large branches will need to be removed ; that where 

 the proper spring and summer pruning is done annually, the thumb and finger, 

 with occasional use of knife, will keep the tree in good shape, with the top pro- 

 perly thinned. This is probably true if the conditions are strictly fulfilled, but 

 in ordinary apple orchards it is necessary to make some use of a fine saw. To 

 grow good, fully developed apples, richly colored, it is necessary to have the tops 

 of the trees so thin that the sunlight shall fall on every leaf and every .individual 

 fruit, and the air circulate freely among them. The leaves and the rind of the 

 fruit are the great perfecters and colorists of fruit, through the absorption of light 

 and gases. Some apple trees are naturally so inclined to make thick heads that 

 a considerable proportion of the apples never attain to proper size and color, 

 unless the branches are kept thoroughly thinned. Witness, for example, the 

 difference between the pale green, tasteless, or bitter. Northern Spys, grown on 

 the inside of an unpruned tree and the large, highly colored specimens grown on 

 the outside, fully exposed to air and sunlight. To properly prune a fruit tree is 

 an intellectual exercise, requiring sharp observation and considerable thought. 

 I never cut off a branch without being able to give a good reason for it and why 

 I cut it in preference to an adjoining one. Where the branches rub together 

 there is generally a good reason why one should be removed in preference to the 

 other. Avoid sawing off large limbs wherever possible. It is great tax on the 

 vitality of a tree to cut off large limbs. It is generally less exhausting to remove 

 two or three small ones than one large one. 



We seldom practice cutting back the last year's growth of the apple tree, 

 for inasmuch as the apple is of rather slow growth seldom adding more than 

 twelve to eighteen inches of new growth annually, it is hardly necessary to 

 shorten in that growth. Moreover, the new growth of the apple generally mat- 

 ures to the terminal bud. With the pear and the peach it is different. When 

 thrifty the peach seldom matures to the tip, and as it forms fruit buds on the 

 new wood, cutting back one-half or one-third of that wood would cut off but a 

 little more than the weaker, frost-bitten buds, and the remaining buds would 

 develop into larger, better fruit and more in bulk than if all that would grow 

 were suffered to grow. 



The same rule applies to the pear, especially the drawf pear. I visited 

 several times one of the finest, best cultivated dwarf pear orchards in Western 

 New York. The varieties were Angouleme and Howell. Every year the new 



