PRUNING. 



CRITICISMS BY THE EDITOR. 



IjROF. Bailey gives eight reasons for 

 pruning, all of which in our opinion 

 may be included in one object, viz. : 

 To so direct the growth of the tree 

 that the best results in fruit bearing shall be 

 attained. 



This work may be done at any time, but 

 the vigor of the tree is best maintained by 

 pruning while the wood is dormant. To 

 keep the tree in condition forgiving the best 

 results attention is needed, not only during 

 the season of rest, but also during that of 

 growth, in order that strength may not be 

 wasted in producing a large amount of wood 

 which must afterwards be sacrificed. 



Tree Butchery. — It is a mistake, very 

 commonly made, to neglect an apple 

 orchard during the first ten or fifteen 

 years of its growth, and all at once 

 to set to work with axe and saw to attempt 

 to prune the trees into shape. Butchering 

 is the only word applicable to such a process. 

 Those trees can never fully recover from the 

 shock received, and the huge wounds wil 

 in time be the means of inproducing decay 

 into the very heart of the tree, diminishing 



its vitality and shortening its life. We have 

 at Maplehurst an old orchard which in its 

 early years was treated in this barbarous 

 fashion, and which has ever since served 

 as an object lesson to the writer. The prun- 

 ing was always done by cutting away the 

 great branches of the trunk until those re- 

 maining were far up and almost out of 

 reach. In one case I remember trying in 

 vain with a ladder thirty feet long to gather 

 the finest apples on a Golden Sweet tree, 

 and after reaching and climbing, I had to 

 shake down most of the golden beauties 

 only to be smashed and bruised so that they 

 were rendered wholly unfit for sale. Many 

 of these old trees are hollow trunked, aff"ord- 

 ing fine hiding places for squirrels, but in 

 the end they toppled over with their own 

 weight. Another evil was the great number 

 of sprouts whicli sprang up about these 

 great cuts, an effort of Dame Nature to 

 make up for the sudden loss of limbs. 

 Especially was this trouble apparent in cases 

 where my grandfather, in his efforts to 

 open out the head of the tree to the rays of 

 the sun, had cut out the whole top. The 



