CHAPTER XII 



PRUNING TREES AND THINNING FRUIT 



It is not intended to enter into a discussion of the general theories 

 of pruning. The reader desiring to pursue them is referred to the 

 abundant literature on the subject in Eastern and European treatises. 

 The effort to approve or condemn these theories by considering them 

 in the light of California experience and observation might lead to 

 interesting conclusions, but it has no place in a work aiming merely 

 at an exposition of what appears to be the most satisfactory practice 

 in California fruit growing. It will be found that this practice varies 

 somewhat in the different regions of California, sometimes in degree, 

 sometimes in kind, because of different local conditions, and it might 

 be found that nearly all reasonable theories of pruning could be 

 verified in California experience. 



Pruning in California is chiefly undertaken as a shaping process. 

 Our fruit trees are naturally so prone to bear fruit that pruning to 

 produce fruitfulness is seldom thought of, and still more rarely 

 practiced, while pruning to reduce bearing wood, and .thus decrease 

 the burden of the tree, is quite widely done, to take the place, in 

 part, of thinning out the fruit. Pruning to restore vigor to the tree 

 as in cutting it back to induce a new wood growth, is also rather a 

 rare proceeding, but probably could be much more widely employed 

 to advantage. We prune, then, for shape and for the many practical 

 advantages which inhere in the form now prevailing in California 

 orchards. Some of these advantages are peculiar to our climate; 

 others we share with those who advocate a similar form elsewhere. 

 Our best orchards of the same fruits in adjacent localities are 

 almost identical in form and general appearance of the trees, and 

 those more distant differ chiefly in the extent to which the same 

 principles are applied. And this is not because the trees are allowed 

 to follow their natural inclination, which should secure resemblance, 

 but because their natural bent is resolutely conquered by agreement 

 of growers that they know what is good for the tree ; and this sub- 

 stantial unanimity is the result of the experience of the last seventy 

 years. People possessed of the art temperament sometimes com- 

 plain of the depressing uniformity and artificiality of orchard-tree 

 shapes in California. They are apt to lament the fact that systematic 

 orcharding destroys the picturesquesness of tree-growth. They 

 should understand that a picturesque fruit tree has no place in com- 

 mercial fruit growing. The producing tree is an agency to serve 

 certain purposes. The orchardist does not pursue uniformity for 

 its own sake, but rather for the purpose it serves, and the fact that 

 many thinking men have practically agreed upon a certain form as 

 an ideal of producing ability is demonstration that such form is, at 

 least, approximately correct. There is an industrial conception of a 

 tree, which is necessarily and essentially different from a concetion 



