57 



To cultivate or not to cultivate is a question to be determined by 

 climate and condition of soil. Where it is deemed advisable to 

 encourage growth it will be proper to employ such appliances of culture 

 as are known to produce that result ; and again, when ample luxuriance 

 is secured, and the tendency is still in that direction, all surface culture 

 should be abandoned and the orchard laid down in grass, cultivation 

 to be again practiced when the trees indicate its necessity. 



PRUNING. 



The pear tree is usually a victim of excessive pruning. It is pruned 

 in winter to make it grow, and pruned and pinched in summer to make 

 it fruit. Why it is that the pear more than other spur-bearing fruit 

 trees should be supposed to require so close and continued pruning 

 does not appear of easy explanation. It is evident that this immoderate 

 pruning is not followed by satisfactory results, for while apple, plum, 

 and cherry trees fruit with abundant regularity, with but little atten- 

 tion to pruning, unfruitfulness in the pear is a frequent cause of com- 

 plaint, especially with those who pay the strictest attention to pruning 

 rules, showing clearly that successful pear culture is not dependent 

 upon pruning alone. While it is perhaps equally erroneous to assert 

 that pear trees should not be pruned at all an extreme which no ex- 

 perienced cultivator will indorse it is worthy of inquiry whether un- 

 pruned trees do not exhibit a better fruit bearing record than those 

 which have been subject to the highest pruning codes. How far the 

 proverbial liability of the pear to suffer from blight may be due to the 

 interference and disarrangement of growths caused by summer prun- 

 ing it may not be possible to decide, but the tendency to late fall 

 growths, and the consequent immaturity of wood which is thereby en- 

 couraged*, is well known to be of much injury and greatly conducive 

 to disease. Perhaps no advice that has been given is so fruitful a- 

 cause of failure and disappointment in fruit culture as that embodied 

 in the brief sentence, " Prune in summer for fruit." 



The physiological principle upon which this advice is based is that 

 which recognizes barrenness in fruit trees as the result of an undue 

 amount of wood growth, and that, in accordance with acknowledged 

 laws, any process that will secure a reduction of growth will induce 

 fruitfulness. The removal of foliage from a tree in active growth will 

 weaken its vitality by causing a corresponding check to the extension 

 of roots, but the removal of the mere points of strong shoots has no 

 palpable effect in checking root growth, the roots proceed to grow and 

 the sap seeks outlets in other channels, forming new shoots, which in 

 no way increase the fruitfulness of the plant. 



While it may be confidently stated that, as a practical rule, easily 

 followed, and of general application, summer pruning for fruit can not 

 be recommended except as an expedient rarely successful, it is also true 

 that there are certain ueriods in the growth of a plant when the 



