212 SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS. 



ripen before the advent of early frosts. Few have time for 

 pruning in JNIay or June. If they have, let them try it by 

 all means, especially on the black-cap species. It does not 

 require so much time as it does prompt action at the proper 

 period of growth. In the garden, summer pinching can 

 transform a raspberry bush into an ornamental shrub as 

 beautiful as useful. It is much better adapted to the hardier 

 vatieties than to those that must be bent down and covered 

 with earth. With the R. Occidentalis species, summer 

 pinching would always pay well. The best I can do, usu- 

 ally, with the red varieties, is to prune in November and 

 March ; it should be done before the buds develop. Un- 

 less early fruit is wanted, I beheve in cutting back heroically. 

 Nature once gave me a very useful hint. One very cold 

 winter, a row of Clarke raspberries was left unprotected. 

 The canes were four or five feet high, but were killed down 

 to the snow-level, or within eighteen inches of the ground ; 

 but from what was left uninjured, we had as many and far 

 finer berries than were gathered from other rows where the 

 canes had been left their full length and protected by a 

 covering of earth. The fruit was later, however. I would 

 remind careful observers of the raspberry how often buds 

 on canes that have been broken off or cut away back develop 

 into long sprays, enormously fruitful of the largest berries. I 

 have counted fifty, and even eighty, berries on a branch 

 that had grown from a single bud within one or two feet of 

 the ground. These lower buds often do not start at all 

 when the canes are left their full, or nearly their full length. 

 In the latter case the fruit ripens much earUer and more 

 together ; and since an early crop, though inferior in quality 

 and quantity, may be more valuable than a late one, the 

 fruit grower often objects to pruning. But in the garden, 

 while the canes of some early kinds are left their full length, 



