PRUNING— THE METHOD 



421 



with equal severity. However, the influence on fruit-spur formation 

 of heading as compared with thinning out is much more pronounced in 

 some varieties than in others. Gano, for instance, showed practically 

 no difference in this respect. 



Even more striking than the inequality in numbers of spurs from the 

 two kinds of pruning was that in the amount of new shoot growth. 

 Heading back invariably led to greater shoot production than a corre- 

 sponding amount of thinning out (see Table 11). In Esopus the amount 



Fig. 51. — Grimes apple tree, showing a typical response to thinning out. Compare with 



Fig. 50. 



of new shoot growth was almost double that in the thinned trees. Appar- 

 ently thinning out some of the shoots in a tree does not result in diverting 

 the same amount of food and moisture they would have used into the 

 remaining unpruned shoots. Certainly it does not result in a suffi- 

 ciently increased new shoot growth from them to compensate for that 

 which would ordinarily have grown from the portion of the top that 

 has been pruned away. It has some stimulating influence of 

 this kind but it also results in a reduction in the total new growth formed. 



