MULCHING AND PRUNING. 87 



most successful groves and the healthiest trees are those 

 where the lower branches, when laden with fruit, barely 

 escape or even touch the ground. Keep an open head to 

 the tree so that the sun and air can reach freely to all 

 parts, leaving the most vigorous lateral branches and cut- 

 ting away the weaker ones. Never allow your young trees 

 to become matted with branches inside so that the trunk 

 can not be seen. Sooner or later they will crowd each 

 other so much that you will be compelled to cut them out, 

 and then all their vigor of growth will be just so much 

 vitality thrown away. Better keep the head open from 

 the start and allow no such wastage of time and thrift. 



By pursuing this course systematically, by the time the 

 tree is ready to bear it will be in fine shape " a thing of 

 beauty and a joy forever." It will then need very little 

 after-pruning, except to clear out dead branches. 



If you have set your trees twenty-five or thirty feet 

 apart, keep the tops low to facilitate gathering the fruit ; 

 if, however, they are set only twenty feet apart, higher 

 tops will be desirable, since the ground must not be too 

 densely shaded by the foliage. The orange is emphatically 

 a child of the sun, and will not thrive unless sun and air 

 can circulate freely about and above its roots. 



Prune in the spring, in January, February, or March. 

 Fall or winter pruning is apt to be injurious as promoting 

 new growth at a season when growth should be checked. 



Whenever possible cut away the large thorns that not 

 only make gathering the fruit a slow and delicate opera- 

 tion, attended with torn flesh and clothes, but puncture the 

 oranges when swaying in the breeze, and thus render them 

 unsalable. 



