ROOT-PRUNING HOW DEMONSTRATED. 93 



One-third of each of these kinds were root and top-pruned, 

 leaving only prongs of roots one to three inches long ; one- 

 third were pruned so that the roots were from five to seven 

 inches long, and the remaining third were not root-pruned, 

 except that the ends of badly mutilated roots were removed. 

 The tops were in every case removed, leaving the apples 

 about 2^ feet long, peaches twenty inches, and pears about 

 sixteen inches. No selection was made from the total num- 

 ber of trees for each lot, except that the poorest rooted ones, 

 when otherwise of the same vigor, were selected to be 

 pruned, thus giving a seeming advantage to the unpruned 

 trees. The pear trees were cut at a point about sixteen 

 inches from the root, and with special reference to five or six 

 good buds to be used as the basis of future limb growth. 



The trees were all set side by side in a uniform soil, about 

 six inches deep, in a common plow furrow. Those that were 

 root-pruned were set with three or four times the speed of 

 those with a mass of roots, to be carefully placed and 

 arranged as they were in the nursery. They all received fair 

 culture, such as would be given by any orchardist, with a com- 

 mon Iron Age cultivator. Notes were taken several times 

 during the growing season, and at intervals a few of each set 

 were taken up and the growth and character of the roots 

 noted. Photography was freely used to record ,the features 

 of growth. 



By July ii the unpruned peach trees had made consider- 

 ably more growth than the root-pruned trees. The apples 

 and pears showed at that time only slight differences of 

 growth in favor of the unpruned trees. The first few months 

 the root-pruned trees do not start a very rapid growth, but by 

 fall overtake or exceed the growth of the un-root-pruned. 

 We did not lose a single tree from any of the sets. 



By fall the unpruned peach trees had made a little more 

 growth than the root-pruned, but they were not of as even a 

 growth as the root-pruned. 



In case of the pears, the root-pruned were far more uni- 

 form in growth, and anyone could see that they had outgrown 

 those that started the season with a full set of roots. 



