18 FRUIT-GARDENING. 



straight upwards, with, boughs projecting laterally, on every 

 side, at distances of two or three feet apart. The boughs also 

 should have limbs at suitable distances apart. All the 

 branches should not be cut off the limbs for several feet from 

 the body of the tree, as many of our apple-orchards have been 

 pruned. The-entire area occupied by the branches should be 

 well filled up with fruit-producing limbs. In order to do this, 

 one must commence pruning trees when they are young, and 

 prune a little every season, as the branches require. It is 

 decidedly objectionable to allow trees of any kind to grow 

 unpruned for several years, and then give them a severe prun- 

 ing. Some trees need but little pruning; while others require 

 more or less every year. 



BEST TOOLS FOR PRUNING. 



The implements employed in pruning, and the manner .of 

 using them, are matters of moment. If the operation is com- 

 menced when the tree is young, and judiciously followed up, a 

 good knife, a small saw, a mallet, and a chisel fixed on a six-foot 

 handle, to trim the tops and extremities of the branches, are all 

 the tools that are required. A large saw will be occasionally 

 wanted ; but an axe or hatchet should never be employed, as 

 they fracture the wood, bruise and tear the bark, and disfigure 

 the tree. 



BUDDING- AND GRAFTING FRUIT-TREES. 



Budding and Grafting, Lindley observes, are operations that 

 equally depend for their success upon the property that buds 

 possess of shooting roots downward, and stems upward ; but 

 in these practices, the roots strike between the bark and wood 

 of the stock, instead of into the earth, and form new layers of 



