lo8 Pruning. 



teaches us, as being all that is really necessary where the cultivation has 

 not been marked by slovenly mismanagement. 



For this light pruning., there is no season of the year more favorable 

 than the five or six wrecks preceding the middle of July. During this 

 period of fifteen or twenty days on each side of the summer solstice, the 

 sap flows sluggishly, and is too thick to exude from wounds, however 

 made, so that the healing process goes rapidly forward. Where 

 deciduous trees have for a long time had their own way, there is, all 

 things considered, no better period in which to remove their superfluous 

 wood than the six weeks preceding the middle of December. This 

 heavy pruning, however, may be continued throughout the winter, 

 during mild weather, but always very cautiously when the wood is 

 frozen, and especially towards the spring, when symptoms of bleeding 

 begin to appear. Unquestionably, for either light or heavy operations 

 with saw or knife, the twelve or fourteen weeks preceding the middle 

 of May should be, as much as possible, avoided. During a few weeks, 

 especially just before their leaves begin to expand, the sap of nearly all 

 our trees is so thin and watery that it flows out or bleeds whenever there 

 is even the slightest wound through the bark, and where this occurs, the 

 healing is slow and imperfect at best. One exception, it is true, must 

 be made in favor of trees that are transplanted in the spring. In this 

 case, heading-in or thinning-out of the branches, more especially of 

 deciduous kinds, is necessary, in order that the roots, enfeebled and 

 mutilated by the operation of lifting.^ — as the gardeners call it, — may 

 not be over-taxed before recovering sufficient strength to sustain the 

 growth above ground. 



If pi-uners, however, would only abstain from using a saw or knife 

 upon all other subjects during the four months preceding June first, the 

 manner of pruning would be very much more important than the time. 

 The limits of this communication, however, do not admit of any expla- 

 nation of the various processes of pruning, or of the results that may 

 be produced thereby. 



Wherever wounds, exceeding about half an inch in diameter, have 

 been made by any operations in arboriculture, there should be an 

 application of some protection from the air, until the exposed wood is 

 overgrown by a new covering of bark. Shellac, dissolved in alcohol, 

 grafting wax, coal tar, or common paint, are all serviceable ; the latter 

 being the most convenient, the neatest, and least offensive to the eye, 

 because it can be easily made of the color of the bark ; and this, for 

 appearance at least, is worth something to people of taste. Although 

 there are cultivators who doubt the utility of any such coating for tree 



