272 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 



the value of manure are included, the 

 dairy showing is very gratifying. 



F. A. Norton, 

 Grandview. Wash. 



PBUNENG 



Pruning Is plant surgery. It is the 

 knife or instrument applied to a tree as 

 the knife of the surgeon is applied to the 

 body of the animal or of man. The con- 

 sequences of error in the two kinds of 

 gurgery may be vastly different. 



The life forces of the tree tend to re- 

 store the equilibrium that was impaired 

 by the severing of the limb from the par- 

 ent stock. It will likely put out new 

 branches that perform, in a measure, the 

 functions of the old, or increase the 

 strength of existing branches, and this is 

 an effort of nature to restore equilibrium 

 of form and energy. Thus the conse- 

 quences between the two kinds of surgery 

 are different and yet analogous. 



Hare A Definite Plan 



This leads us to conclude that no one 

 should prune without a definite end in 

 view. No one should go into an orchard 

 and cut and slash promiscuously without 

 reasons, any more than he would send a 

 butcher into a hospital to carve the bodies 

 of patients according to the rules he 

 learned in the shop. No two patients in 

 a hospital will need exactly the same treat- 

 ment, unless in very exceptional eases 

 where the circumstances are very similar 

 and the organisms of the patients alike. 

 In nature no two things are exactly alike, 

 therefore, no two trees would demand 

 exactly the same treatment in pruning. 

 There are general characteristics, how- 

 ever, that belong to certain varieties, and 

 these would lead us to give to each and 

 every one of these varieties the same 

 general treatment. For instance, the 

 Wagener apple tree tends to grow 

 straight, the branches closing in toward 

 the center very much on the style of a 

 Bartlett pear. There are other apples 

 that tend to grow in the same manner. 

 In trees of this character, the limbs would 

 be cut away from the center with the 

 purpose of giving a more spreading and 

 open top than they would naturally have. 

 The Jonathan, the Winesap, and other 



varieties tend to produce bushy tops with 

 spreading branches. Trees of this char- 

 acter should generally be pruned more 

 from the outside in order to make it pos- 

 sible to cultivate, spray and gather the 

 fruit with less interference from the 

 overhanging branches. 



Experience in Low Heading 



There is one thing about which we are 

 more fixed in our opinions than about 

 any other on the subject of pruning, and 

 that is the question of low heading as 

 compared with high heading. We have 

 been brought to this conclusion by one 

 of those accidents which often cause us 

 to discover things we would not other- 

 wise discover, and therefore to reverse 

 our judgments of methods. We have in 

 our orchard several trees which, when 

 the.v were young, were injured during 

 the winter by rabbits. These orchard 

 enemies peeled the bark from at least a 

 dozen trees, and the owner of the orch- 

 ard felt that great damage was done to 

 them. The question was, whether to 

 dig them up and plant others, or to 

 allow them to grow and put out new 

 shoots near the ground. The latter plan 

 was adopted. These trees are now six- 

 teen years old, the same age as other 

 trees in the orchard, and of those adja- 

 cent to them. We have taken photo- 

 graphs of these trees in comparison with 

 others of the same age and the same va- 

 rieties near them, and the photographs 

 show what is true in fact, that in every 

 case the trees that were headed at the 

 ground or just above the ground, are 

 the largest, most vigorous trees in the 

 orchard. The same conditions prevailed 

 in the case of the high headed trees as in 

 the case of the low, except that in the 

 case of the low headed trees the branches 

 put out just above the ground, while the 

 others were headed so that they began 

 to branch about two feet above the ground. 

 Whatever may be the causes the facts 

 remain. We have seen this in other 

 orchards as well as in our own. When 

 we try to discover the causes we find 

 the following: 



1. There is less space between the root 

 system and the top system, and there is. 



