VASE FORM WITH CONTINUOUS LEADERS 115 



crop the next season. To bear this crop greater care should be taken at 

 the third winter pruning to leave the small laterals low down on the 

 main branches, for on them, clustered close in the head of the tree, most 

 of the first crop will be found. Though some trees, as stated, do bear 

 earlier than the third summer, the fruit is not usually considered of 

 commercial account until the third summer. An engraving is given of 

 a peach tree just after its second winter pruning. It is a very good 

 representative of the common vase-form of a tree as grown in Cali- 

 fornia. It has four main branches, each issuing from a different point 

 on the stem, each permitted to carry two main branches, which are not 

 arranged around the circumference, but some of them tending toward 

 the center. At the third pruning more shoots have been left than are 

 required by the rule, for, starting with four main branches, there are 

 usually sixteen left at the third pruning. 



VASE FORM WITH CONTINUOUS LEADERS 



This form has the same prototype as the common vase form, viz. : 

 the French garden tree and it adheres more closely to the motives and 

 characters of its prototype. As practiced in the Winters region on the 

 west side of the Sacramento Valley, it is aptly described by D. J. Whit- 

 ney as follows : 



"It is called the open-top system of pruning. Hold in mind a wide, 

 shallow bowl with long legs bent inward and joining at the bottom com- 

 ing down rather regularly from rim to base and you know what a typi- 

 cal open-top apricot tree looks like. The idea seems to have leaders to 

 come up along the outside of the tree, none in the center at all, to have 

 the center of the tree open, or occupied only by fruit wood and not 

 much of it. In the yearly pruning the development is all outward. 

 There is an effort to have fruit wood along the leaders down to the 

 crotch, but often without success. Looking over an orchard from above, 

 there can be seen a lot of flat green disks set regularly twenty to thirty 

 feet or so apart." 



This variation of the vase form is quite a departure from the com- 

 mon vase form, both in its purposes and methods. It is used in the 

 Winters' region for apricots, peaches and plums. It is coming into the 

 upper San Joaquin Valley for peaches, the leaders, however, being 

 grown nearer to upright because of the weaker wood of the peach. As 

 used for that fruit it will be discussed in detail in Chapter XX. It is 

 also used for the lemon, as exemplified by the flat, saucer-shaped trees 

 which one will see in some lemon orchards. As something of a de- 

 parture, both in principles and practices, from the common vase form 

 which has widely prevailed for the last forty years, it has still to widely 

 demonstrate its claims to superiority. 



PRUNING BEARING TREES 



Three winter prunings of deciduous trees usually establish their per- 

 manent form, and subsequent pruning is chiefly directed toward the 

 retention of that form ; for strength of branch and stem ; for renewal 



