PRUNING. 207 



The beds should be about three feet wide, for the 

 convenience of gathering the fruit, without trani|)ing 

 down the soil. Never use stable or horse manure, 

 unless it be well rotted. In spading, select the old 

 plants to turn under, and keep a succession of new 

 ones for bearers. — Franklin Farmer. 



PRUNING. 



A GREAT variety of experiments made in Europe by 

 Knight, Van Mons, and Thaer, and in this country by 

 Buel, Kenrick, and others, have been made on the 

 subject of pruning trees: though the results did not 

 perfectly agree on all points, yet they seem to fully 

 justify the general conclusion, that the best time for 

 pruning trees is that period iu midsummer in which 

 there appears a cessation of the sap's ascent, and which 

 lasts some three or four weeks. Those who have paid 

 attention to the growth of trees must have remarked 

 that the period of increase is divided into two seasons, 

 during the first of which, or the one most active, 

 the shoots that form fruit, flower, or seed-buds are 

 formed; and the other, or later summer's growth, is 

 confined to the shoots that produce wood- buds only. 

 " After the second growth is completed, the efi'ects of 

 the descending sap, in the formation of new bark, is 

 -apparent in the healing up of new wounds in parts of 

 the stem or branches, vvdiich now proceeds with more 

 activity than during any other season of the year. 

 Branches pruned off smooth at the stem, though the 

 latter be young, healthy, and containing a perfect 

 pitch, before or shortly after the completion of the 

 midsummer's growth, do not produce shoots from the 

 edge of the wounds caused by their removal, which 

 always happens more or less when pruning is per- 

 formed on free-growing trees after the fall of the leaf, 



