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CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



practice. Not only is more thus accomplished in the same number 

 of days' work, but the orchard is earlier in shape for the winter 

 spraying and cultivation, and the grower is ahead of his work and 

 not behind it all the season If the season is unusually rainy. Several 

 years' practice of this method discloses no bad results except in the 

 one item of increasing danger from frost. Vines and trees pruned 

 early in the dormant period have a tendency to start growth earlier 

 than those pruned late in the dormant period. In places, then, where 

 early bloom and fruit-setting are particularly threatened by frost, 

 this practice may be undesirable. 



Spring Pruning. Resting largely upon this matter of retarding 

 growth, the practice of pruning very late in the dormant period, or, 

 in fact, at the beginning of the growing season, is also gaining wider 

 adoption where frost injury is especially feared. It is not actual 

 freezing, but a drop of two or three degrees below the freezing point 

 which is feared, and during recent years such a temperature has 

 wrought havoc with some fruits, in early valley regions particularly. 

 Later pruning, even after the bloom and foliage have appeared, has 

 worked no injury to the trees, but it is less conveniently done than 

 when the trees are free of foliage. 



Summer Pruning. Summer pruning, to induce bearing, is, as has 

 been previously intimated, but little employed in this State, for the 

 constant tendency of our trees is to bear early and to overbear. 

 Enough has, however, been done in individual cases to show that 

 fruit-bearing is promoted by pruning after the chief growth of the 

 season has been attained. If the pruning results in forcing out 

 laterals late in the season it has been done too early. What is 

 desirable is the strengthening or development of fruit buds, and 

 this will be accomplished after the energy has been too far dissi- 

 pated to make new wood growth. Such pruning of the earlier fruits 

 like cherries and apricots is done as soon as the current crop of fruit 

 is gathered. 



Summer pruning to check the too exuberant wood growth of 

 some kinds of trees is employed to some extent, chiefly in the warmer 

 parts of the State, where the vegetative process in some trees seems 

 fairly to run riot, and unless checked is apt to ruin the tree by 

 breaking to pieces when the wind and weight of fruit test its 

 strength. The methods of summer pruning employed in different 

 parts of the State for different fruits will be considered in connec- 

 tion with the special chapters on these fruits. 



Summer pruning to preserve form is another matter, and relates 

 in the main to pinching in, to check undesirable extension and to 

 direct the sap toward shoots in which growth is desired. This prac- 

 tice is approved by most of our orchardists, and is employed by them 

 to a greater or less extent. More people believe in it than practice 

 it, however, because the summer months, with their long succession 

 of fruits to be gathered and shipped or dried, and the additional 

 consideration that there is always a scarcity of labor at this time, 



five the orchardist so much work to do that he is more apt to con- 

 ne his "pinching" to a little that he may do now and then when he 



