100 POMOLOGY 



with ten-year-old apple trees that had not previously fruited. 

 The extent of the results reported, however, are scarcely 

 sufficient to justify the practice. 



Batchelor and Goodspeed ^ conducted pruning inves- 

 tigations with the Jonathan and Gano apples. The trees 

 were five j^ears old when the work started and it was con- 

 tinued for four years. The winter-pruned trees averaged 

 1055 pounds to a tree for the four years as compared with 

 937 pounds from the summer-pruned trees, or a loss for the 

 period of 257 boxes to the acre. Thus the summer pruning 

 resulted in less fruit rather than more in this experiment, 

 but whether the reduction is due to a lessened area of fruit- 

 bearing wood removed by the sununer pruning, or to an 

 actual depression of fruit-bud formation is not clear. 



Drinkard,- working with dwarf apple trees, found that: 

 "Summer pruning of branches of the tree the latter part of 

 June, when fruit-buds normally begin to show differentia- 

 tion, checked wood growth the year in which the pruning 

 was done, and greatly stimulated the formation of fruit- 

 buds, as was shown by the bloom and crop of fruit the fol- 

 lowing year." The foliage of these trees was reduced 50 per 

 cent by the pruning and as a result the "trees made very 

 short growth in annual shoots." 



Summer pruning has been advocated by Lewis for west- 

 ern conditions, for young trees of non-bearing age in order 

 to produce a development of laterals and to gain practically 

 one season by the operation.^ The pinching or pruning 

 should be done rather early in the season, or as soon as the 

 rampant growth can be observed, which will be about the mid- 

 dle of June under Oregon conditions. The pruning would 



1 Batchelor, L. D., and W. E. Goodspeed. Utah Agr. Exp. Sta. Bull. 

 140. 1915. 



2 Drinkard, A. W. Jr. Va. Agr. Exp. Sta. Tech. Bull. 5. 1915. 



3 Ore. Agr. Exp. Sta. Bull. 130. 1915. 



