PRUNING BLACKBERRIES 417 



it will send out fruiting laterals at the same date the following 

 season. 



Third, it does not matter whether you make the new growth 

 bunchy by laterals following pinching or whether you let it run out 

 and cut off part of it at the end of the growing season or whether 

 you shorten it in and at the same time cut away closely all the 

 laterals which it may have made on its own account when it was 

 running out. In all cases there will be dormant buds enough to give 

 fruiting shoots on whatever part of the cane you reserve. 



Fourth, the way you prune, then, depends upon serving your 

 own convenience in the training of these shoots up to a post, along 

 on a wire or along on a ridge on the ground whatever suits you 

 best to keep the fruit out of the dirt, and to promote such cultiva- 

 tion as is desirable, etc., will be accepted by the plant as not inter- 

 fering with its starting fruiting shoots from whatever dormant buds 

 you have allowed it to retain on the wood which it matured the 

 previous season. 



Fifth, there is in addition the application of the principle that 

 good large fruit is the product of a plant which is not carrying too 

 much bearing wood ; that is, is not endeavoring to perfect too much 

 fruit at the same time. For this reason, as well as for convenience, 

 it is desirable not to allow a plant to retain all the cane it grows, 

 but to shorten it or to remove the laterals or part of them or to 

 shorten the laterals or in any other way to require the plant to direct 

 its energy to the better development of fewer fruits. 



Sixth, growers are, of course, influenced by different considera- 

 tions. Amateur growers delighting in running vines on fences or 

 trellises would not prune as would a commercial grower, who can 

 not have canes running all over his fields. The amateur can pinch a 

 main shoot and send the laterals up the arms of a fan-shaped trellis 

 if he likes and make an object of rare garden beauty, and he can 

 reduce the excess of bearing^ wood by cutting away the parts of the 

 laterals which run beyond his arms or extra ones beyond those he 

 can carry on his trellis. From the point of view of the plant, he 

 does the same thing that the commercial grower does when he 

 conies along with his scythe or sickle and cuts away indiscrim- 

 inately all the growth which goes beyond the space where it is con- 

 venient for him to have the fruit. 



Seventh, do not be too particular about exact methods to imitate ; 

 try rather to discern principles which may be served by many dif- 

 ferent methods. 



Six Months Fruiting of Crandalls. One way in which the prin- 

 ciples just outlined may be applied to Crandairs Early, which is our 

 leading blackberry, considering the State as a whole, is described by 

 Mr. R. E. Hodges as the practice of Mr. T. B. Cannon, of Los 

 Angeles : 



Briars eighteen to twenty-four inches tall, having good root systems, 

 are set with a spade in finely pulverized soil as soon after they are dug 

 as possible to avoid wilting, to the same depth as they were before, four 

 feet apart in rows eight feet apart. The first year they require no pruning. 



