94 FRUIT-GROWING 



In the first place a bearing tree should, if 

 correctly pruned in its younger days, require 

 very little pruning. This is contrary to the 

 advice you will find in some of the older 

 books but it is true nevertheless. Occasional 

 branches may die, or may break from the load 

 of fruit or through accident. Such branches 

 must be taken off, of course, and as the tree 

 grows older it may develop so many small 

 branches that the sunlight and air are excluded 

 and the fruit in the center of the tree suffers. 

 Such trees need pruning, but if they are gone 

 over every year you will find that the total an- 

 nual removal from each tree will be a very 

 small amount compared to the amount of wood 

 removed from the young trees each season for 

 the first six or eight years of their growth. 



Too often the grower finds himself con- 

 fronted with a number of old trees that, through 

 some other person's neglect, have become far 

 too dense to be profitable fruit machines. The 

 pruning of such trees is a separate problem and 

 is not to be confused with the pruning of the 

 normal bearing tree in a properly managed or- 

 chard. The average old apple tree in the farm 

 orchard usually belongs to the neglected class. 

 As a rule such trees suffer either from too 

 much or too little pruning — usually too little. 

 I have seen so many of this kind that are sim- 

 ply immense brush piles with their branches 



