tl4 AGRICULTURAL ESSAYS. 



PRUNING OF FRUIT-TREES. 



A writer, whose essay on the subject of apple-trees, is pub- 

 lished in the Massachusetts Agricultural Repository,* mentions 

 three modes of mismanagement which injure orchards. 1. Be- 

 ginning to prune them in March, when there is still much wet 

 and frosty weather, and no activity in the sap of the tree. 2. The 

 old practice of hacking and mutilating apple-trees in a manner 

 ruinous to an orchard. It is, says he, an universal practice 

 among the old farmers, to mount the tree with a hatchet, or 

 bill-hook; and hack off any branch which is in a state of decay, 

 •r which is misplaced, about six or eight inches from its inser- 

 tion, leaving a stump to rot, and to operate as a conductor of 

 the water, frost, and canker, into tlie mother branch in which 

 it grew, or into the body of the tree, according to its situation. 

 This was done originally from an idea that if you cut close to 

 tiie mother branch, or to the body of the tree, the rot, or can- 

 ker will seize more readily on its trunk, than if cut at a dis- 

 tance, and that the tree will decay the sooner. The practice 

 has been followed without reflection, and without reason by 

 jnany. 



The error is obvious, as any man may learn by making his 

 experiments on a young tree. This writer advises the farmer, 

 when he has fixed upon a limb to be lopped off, if it is large 

 and heavy, to cut it first at some distance from its insertion, ta 

 prevent its vv^eight, in falling, from lacerating the bark at the 

 shoulder, whence your final cut is to be ; because this leaves 

 an opening for water to get under the bark, and cannot easily 

 be healed. You may now saw the stump close to the branch 

 from whence it proceeds, with safety ; or if it be a portion of a 

 branchwhich is to be lopped off,the cut should be down to a sound 

 healthy lateral branch, growing from the same limb ; or if the 

 limb to be cut off, proceed from the body, or trunk of the tree, 

 then it should be sawed close to the shaft. The wood in all 

 •ases, should be smoothed o^er, and the edges of the bark 

 earefully pared with your knife or hatchet, so that the water 

 will run off the wound. If the cut be made on a lateral branch, 

 it should be sawed obliquely, or slanting, so as to leave no 

 dead wood, or wood to die, and in all cases the cut should be 

 ©n a sound and healthy part of the tree. If the branch oh 

 which it is cut is a healthy, vigorous one, it will heal without 

 difficulty, if pruned the last of April or beginning of May ; but 

 if in March, the wound should be covered with a compost j 



* VoU T. p. 121-127* 



