PRUNING FOR PROFIT 



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young green growth there was nothing but dead limbs 

 in the center and the shade was so dense that the sun- 

 light scarcely penetrated into the heart of the tree. 



" 'A victim of poor pruning' was his remark. Then 

 he showed me how the pruning must have been done 

 by inexperienced men for instead of cutting the limbs 

 off as close as possible to the body of the tree, most of 

 the stumps had been left an inch or two long. This pre- 

 vented the bark of the tree from healing over the wound 

 left by the operation, nature's remedy, and each stump 

 was rotting at the end, an ideal place for disease to get 

 a foothold. 



"Then and there I learned that to produce citrus fruits 

 you must open up your trees to the sun and air, and by 



know it all, want $3.50 a day. Whats more, the Japs 

 go right ahead with their work and get done, while the 

 Dagos fool along on the job, look at the trees, stand 

 off and gaze at 'em as if they were trying to paint a , 

 picture and them trees were models.' 



"I said nothing, for it seemed hopeless to try to edu- 

 cate the man who as the bible says has neither the hear- 

 ing ear, nor the seeing eye. Years of work in an orange 

 grove had apparently not taught him that there was a 

 scientific side to pruning and it did not merely consist 

 of sawing off a few limbs here and there, with the 

 main idea of securing a tree shaped like a toy Christ- 

 mas tree, regardless of the fact that the tree's great pur- 

 pose in life was presumed to be fruit production. 



THE SAME TREE, BUT AFTER THE VISIT OF THE PROFESSIONAL PRUNERS 

 A total wreck ragged and unsightly to the eye. It is the same Eureka lemon tree in my grove, after manhandling by those Corsicans. 



keeping the dead wood cut out, furnish plenty of young 

 vigorous limbs upon which to grow it. To an up-to- 

 date orange grower, dead wood on an orange tree is 

 anathema. 



"I went after my man on the question of pruning. 

 'Who does our pruning?' I demanded. 'J a P s > mostly,' 

 was his reply. 'Are they the best for the work?' I was 

 inexorable. 'Well perhaps they aint as scientific as 

 some others but,' and here his penchant for economy 

 came to the front, 'they do the work just as well, as far 

 as I can see, and charge a whole lot less.' 'For instance,' 

 I persisted. 'Well, the Japs charge $2.25 a day for 

 pruning, while the Sicilians and Italians who claim to 



"The next day in answer to my request my friend 

 sent a Corsican pruner to see me, a man born and raised 

 in the citrus groves of his native land. He had great 

 hoops of rings in his ears, was dark and swarthy in 

 complexion and reminded me of the three bandits in 

 Fra Diavolo. Also he weighed about 200 pounds, was 

 not an inch over five feet four in height and his build 

 recalled a boyhood recollection of a picture in a Sunday 

 school book of the mighty Sampson engaged in his 

 cheerful task of tearing from their roots the gates of 

 Gaza. 



"Also he arrived in a Ford, which impressed me. The 

 Japs came on foot. He looked over my splendid lemon 



