396 FUNDAMENTALS OF FRUIT PRODUCTION 



This last can be done by cutting them out and then repeatedly removing 

 watersprouts that take their place, but this involves much labor. If 

 they are subordinated the water sprout problem is largely eliminated 

 and they may serve as fruit-producing branches for many years. In 

 apples, pears and other spur-bearing fruits, their retention may also aid 

 materially in bringing the trees into bearing earlier, because if properly 

 handled they develop fruit spurs and fruit buds freely at a period when 

 heavy pruning back for proper form may prevent to a great extent 

 formation of spurs on the more permanent framework of the tree. Often 

 one of the best ways to subordinate and make fruiting branches from 

 these interior limbs is to let them remain with no heading back at the 

 beginning of their second season. They then produce short vegetative 

 growths from their terminal buds, with few or no lateral shoots but with 

 many lateral spurs. After their second season's growth they are headed 

 back into 2-year-old wood. Treated in this way they make but little 

 further shoot growth and little difficulty is experienced in keeping them 

 as subordinate fruit-bearing limbs. 



Preventing the Formation of Crotches. — It is a principle of rather gen- 

 eral application that the unequal cutting back of two parts in the same 

 tree or plant tends to subordinate that part pruned more severely and 

 to give the advantage to the other. Equal cutting of two shoots or 

 limbs of about the same length results in their equal subsequent develop- 

 ment into a fork or crotch that is a point of weakness in the framework of 

 the tree. Crotches can be largely avoided and the framework corre- 

 spondingly strengthened by pruning with the idea of making one of two 

 equal branches a leader and the other a lateral subordinate to it. 



BEARING HABITS 



There is reason to believe that with proper nutritive conditions in the 

 plant, particularly with an accumulation of certain carbohydrates, any 

 partly developed bud may undergo differentiation, form flower parts 

 and develop as a fruit bud. This assumes that other limiting factors, 

 such as moisture and temperature, are favorable. It is conceivable that 

 in the developing buds of some plants a stage is finally reached when 

 such a differentiation cannot take place except by the unfolding of the 

 bud into a leafy structure and the subsequent formation of the fruit bud 

 at a new growing point. In general, though, every bud is to be regarded 

 as a potential flower bud. In every kind of plant, however, most of the 

 flower buds are formed in certain definite positions, probably because it 

 is only in those positions that nutritive and other conditions favorable 

 for flower bud formation ordinarily occur. It is therefore possible to 

 speak of the bearing or fruiting habit of a plant, though the use of this 

 term does not mean that other types of bearing, other fruiting habits, 

 may not be found on the same plant under unusual conditions. Not 



