THE YOUNG FARMER'S MANUAL. 225 



sag down too much, they might be well shored up, or tied up with 

 wires extending from the top of the tree to them, during the 

 growing season, when they would probably remain in that posi 

 tion. 



303. It is bad policy to allow trees to grow at random for a 

 number of years, and then give them a severe pruning. It in 

 jures a fruit-tree to cut off a large limb as much as it hurts a man 

 to have a limb amputated. Fruit-trees should always be pruned 

 so that a man can easily get around in the tops of them, without 

 the assistance of a ladder. Small branches should be left all along 

 large limbs, so that a person may go on them when plucking fruit. 

 Many people have clipped off all the branches on the large limbs 

 of their apple-trees, so that nothing but a bare limb is left for ten 

 or fourteen feet, with the fruit branches all at the ends of the 

 limbs. This is a very objectionable manner of pruning. The 

 heads or tops of fruit-trees should always be formed as low as 

 will be practicable, and not be too inconvenient getting around 

 beneath the lowest limbs. It will be far better to have the 

 branches low, than it "is to prune them so that a man will need a 

 sixteen feet ladder to get on the limbs. The higher the trees are, 

 the more, by a great deal, will fruit be injured when it falls to 

 the ground, when it falls on any hard substance or against 

 each other. When trees are low, they will produce quite as 

 much, and even more fruit than they would if the same tops were 

 elevated on long limbs sixteen feet higher. When they are very 

 high, much more of the fruit is blown off by high winds, some 

 times before it is ripe; and a greater portion of it cannot be 

 plucked when the trees are high ; whereas, if the trees were low, 

 almost every apple could be plucked. 



304. Many good orchards have been almost ruined by employ 

 ing a raw "bushwhacker" to prune their fruit-trees, who knew no 

 more about the correct principles, according to which fruit-trees 

 should be pruned, than the skillful paddy did whom a certain 

 farmer employed to prune his young orchard, who, on being 

 asked at noon how his pruning progressed, replied, "And I have 

 pruned none at all yet, but have cut them all down." Get J. J. 



