126 PRUNING 



one has grown enough so that when spring comes 'round again 

 and growth begins, the roots can supply the food and water that 

 will be needed to make a natural, typical growth of the top. 

 Now comes along the pruner and takes off twenty-five to fifty 

 per cent of that top. The result is that there remains one 

 hundred per cent of roots to support fifty per cent of top, and 

 of course the top is going to be better supported. It is going 

 to make a tremendous growth to try and take care of all the food 

 that the root is supplying. This is an especially important princi- 

 ple in renovation work, which is discussed in Chapter XVI. 



Rank Growth Opposed to Fruit-hearing. — A second general 

 principle which ought to go with this first one, though it is not 

 strictly a principle of pruning, is that rank wood growth is 

 opposed to fruit-bearing. One will rarely find a tree which is 

 growing very vigorously that is also bearing heavily. The two 

 things simply do not go together. The young tree, so long as it 

 remains vigorous and growthy, does not come into bearing. In 

 general it is those varieties, like the Wagener and Oldenburg 

 apples, which are not vigorous growers, that bear earlj^ in life, 

 while the strong growing sorts like Gravenstein and Spy require 

 more time to come into fruit. So it is with the heavily pruned 

 old tree. It at once starts a very vigorous growth of top but 

 does not bear fruit until it has had time for this growth to 

 subside. 



The lesson which these two principles teach is very fre- 

 quently overlooked by the man who does the pruning. He 

 gauges his success by the amount of wood he takes out of the 

 tree, and then when the tree fails to bear the following year he 

 blames the practice of pruning instead of the operator. 



Influence of Summer Pruning. — A third principle is that 

 when pruning is done in the winter the tendency is to promote 

 a strong growth of wood, while pruning done in the summer 

 tends in the opposite direction, or towards the production of 

 fruit. There can be no question about the first part of this. 

 It is the same fact that was given in the first principle, only 

 stated a little differently. The strength of the tendency will 

 correspond exactly to the severity of the pruning. Prune a 



