The Cultivation of the Fruit-Farm 135 



chapter of accidents is written by wind and storm 

 (even as in winter) and you must cut out bruised 

 branches. Doubtless the best time to trim is at 

 any time after the fruit is picked and before the 

 tree starts growing in the spring. The order in 

 trimming is sprouts, twigs, branches, limbs. Note 

 the order. In cutting off either, you concentrate 

 what remains upon the work you want done. 



Do you want quantity or quality of fruit? You 

 trim accordingly. Trimming off branches or 

 thinning the newly-set fruit is the same thing in 

 kind. Nothing is gained by over-fruiting. Some 

 trees, tmder our artificial orchard life, will fruit 

 themselves to death. Nature takes a preventive 

 hand in the game by blowing off thousands of 

 blossoms, later, by cutting out thousands of newly- 

 set fruit, and latest, by covering the ground be- 

 neath with rejected apples, cherries, peaches, and 

 pears. No tree can mature all its blossoms. As 

 a last stroke, the wind winds up the tree in a crash 

 of ruin. If you want fruit of first quality and size, 

 thin out to taste, which means that you fill more 

 baskets with fewer peaches or prunes and get a 

 larger price than were you to let all the fruit that 

 forms struggle toward an unattainable mattirity. 



Some trees require but little pnming, as cherries 

 and the plum family generally; others require 

 much, as apples and peaches. Of grape-trimming 

 I have already spoken. The safe rule for all fruit- 

 plants is to cut out dead and superfluous growth. 

 But the difficulty is to determine what is superflu- 



