PRUNING 91 



shortened to at least half their length — just as 

 the main stem of the one-year-old was short- 

 ened. After growing a season in the orchard 

 the yearling will consist of its main trunk with 

 a variable number of sprouts. The best of 

 these are to be left to form our framework and 

 the rest are to be removed. Those that are left 

 wall more or less resemble the tree that was 

 planted the year before. In pruning we shall 

 treat each branch exactly as that tree was 

 treated, that is, we shall shorten them just as 

 we shortened the yearling when it was placed 

 in the ground. I have always liked the idea of 

 thinking of each new year's growth as being 

 just that many new trees and I have sometimes 

 found that it simplified my pruning problem 

 considerably. After the second growing season 

 the young tree becomes a more complicated 

 problem, but we must not forget the effect for 

 which we are working. We must persistently 

 watch for development of a central stem and 

 we must, for a few years, keep each season's 

 growth headed back anywhere from one-third to 

 one-half. 



This rather severe pruning is to be practised 

 on what we might describe as a decreasing scale 

 as the tree grows older, but the necessity for it 

 in the first years of an orchard is twofold. In 

 the first place we are forming the shape of the 

 tree and this, as I have already indicated, is of 



