41 



REPORTED TENDENCY OF FARMERS, WHO AT ONE 

 TIME BELIEVED IN IT, TO NOW NEGLECT PRUNING. 



Several thinking Fruit-growers have remarked to us the last 

 year or two that there is a tendency among growers, who took up 

 the pruning of fruit trees some few years ago, and who after keep- 

 ing it up on the lines advocated by experts are inclined to now 

 condemn it as tending to prevent their trees coining into bearing ; 

 to such we would say, do not under .any circumstances make up 

 your mind that pruning in Africa is either a mistake or is 

 unnecessary ; we attribute this result to one of two causes, 

 either the grower has started pruning a tree which was perhaps 

 four to six years old, and was either already in bearing or was 

 just coming into bearing, or the planter has pruned his tree from 

 the time of setting, and he expects to get his fruit too soon. 

 In the first of these instances beginning the necessary cutting 

 when the tree is already established will certainly have the effect 

 of retarding its coming into bearing, and we consider from the 

 result of our own personal experience in many different classes of 

 trees, and we have had it in thousands of cases, that it is a mistake 

 to do on such trees a hea?y cutting out and heading back. If it 

 is necessary to tackle the shaping of such trees, and it generally 

 is so, do the requisite opening out *nd heading back in one year, 

 and after that for the next season, do very little cutting indeed, 

 doing (if anything but a peach) almost all that is required in the 

 first summer, so that the winter cutting will be almost nothing, as 

 one must remember that nature preserves a balance between the 

 roots of the tree and the head, which she takes care to maintain ; 

 therefore, if one goes on everlastingly cutting at the head, nature 

 will continue to push out new wood and throw off the blossom 

 without their setting owing to the strength in the flow of sap. 

 No ! make your heavy cutting in one year to bring the tree into 

 some shape and for bearing and for remaining some years in an 

 orchard where the plough and the cultivator must be worked to 

 economize the labour of keeping clean and loose In the matter of 

 the second case, growers expect too much from their tree, when 

 young. We see on referring to Australian Government reports that 

 some few years ago, there was a great boom in fruit tree planting, 

 but that many growers have thrown up the sponge, the 

 majority because they are too impatient to get returns, and 

 considered that because their trees were not bringing in money in 

 two or three years, that their orchards were not a success, and 

 that trees would not prove satisfactory in their district ; nothing 

 could be more erroneous than views such as these. The practical 

 Fruit-grower recognizes that he must wait a certain length 

 of time for each class of tree to come into bearing, and he 

 Awaits and waits, being perfectly satisfied so long as his 



