NOTES AND COMMENTS. 



307 



season. If the shippers will put up the fruit, 

 I will have a careful oversight of it from 

 the time it leaves the orchard until it is 

 safely stored on shipboard, and Mr. W. 

 A. McKinnon will meet it on arrival in 

 Great Britain, so I think we ought to suc- 

 ceed this season." 



SHORTENING -IN PRUNING 



PRACTICAL experience in fruit grow- 

 ing has brought about some very 

 radical changes in our views of orchard 

 pruning. At one time our theory was : 

 " Pruning is a thrust at the vitality of 

 the tree, and the less of it the better," but 

 now we are convinced this notion is entirely 

 erroneous. We find the unpruned apple 

 orchards void of fruit, even in this year of 

 enormous fruitage ; fruit spurs are stunted 

 with dense shade, and produce nothing, 

 while the tree itself is wasting energy in 

 trying to thin out its own wood, and is 

 choked with half dead and weak growing 

 branches ; while those trees which have been 

 carefully pruned each year, are carrying 

 loads of fine fruit, on vigorous wood. 



ANNUAL CROPS THE RESULT 



I SHORTEN- IN all my apple trees 

 every year, "said Mr. Brennan. "Here 

 is arowof Spys and Baldwins which produce 

 fruit every year. The secret is in the 

 pruning and thinning. That tree is forty 

 years old, and I do not intend to allow 

 it to grow any larger, but will cut it 

 back every spring, to encourage young 

 wood growth, and this young growth is 

 the bearing wood of the following year. 

 I treat plum and pear trees just the same 

 way. I was led to prune as 1 do by 

 the success of the renewal system in prun- 

 ing grapes. I argued that if this method 

 applied to grapes why not to other fruits?" 



When do you pftine? 



Mostly in early spring. My aim is to 

 produce plenty of young vigorous wood 



every year, and then I expect good fruit on 

 it the following year. I reduce the amount 

 of bearing wood that I may always have 

 plenty that is fresh and vigorous. 



Do you manure heavily? 



Yes, I give a heavy annual dressing of 

 ashes and bone dust, and couple with this 

 clean and constant cultivation until August. 



For a long time this Journal has been 

 advocating the thinning of fruit, both to 

 save the vigor of the tree and also to secure 

 fine fruit ; but never until now, have we 

 found an orchardist carrying out the prac- 

 tice in a whole orchard. No wonder Mr. 

 Brennan succeeds in making as much money 

 off his fifteen acres as many a man does off 

 his one hundred. 



THINNING PEACHES 



MR. BRENNAN says he finds the 

 Alexander peach one of his most 

 profitable varieties. Of course it is inclined 

 to overbear and consequently to be small 

 and worthless, but he prevents this by 

 tw^o methods of thinning. The first is 

 by pruning. He shortens the peach wood 

 every spring, never allowing the tree to 

 grow beyond a certain size. This method 

 not only thins out a portion of the bear- 

 ing wood, but encourages a certain 

 amount of new wood growth for the 

 following year's fruitage. It also develops 

 young growth from the ground up, so that 

 he has no waste, barren wood, and his 

 whole tree is within easy reach for thinning, 

 spraying and fruit harvesting. One tree 

 was pointed out which was fifteen years 

 planted. That tree, said he, will never be 

 allowed to grow any taller or spread any 

 wider. The trees in the orchard are only 

 twelve feet apart each way, and yet by his 

 method of shortening back all vigorous 

 growth every spring, they have abundance 

 of room. 



The second method is by removing a por- 

 tion of the young fruit in June. Walking 



