m 



TIIE FAItM. 



eap, or the wood of the top has become uusound. The thing to be done then 

 is to cut back the top, reducing it largely, to give the exhausted system less 

 to do and more chance to recover. The vexed question of even and odd 

 years, or fruitful and barren ones in alternation, which is so important to 

 growers of Baldwins, Greenings, and some other winter sorts is solved most 

 easily by a resolute thinning in the winter preceding the fruitful years, so as 

 to reduce the bearing, and increase the wood and bud forming for the next 

 year. 



Pruning Peacli Trees. — A fruit tree overloaded with fruit is very 

 unsatisfactory to its owner. The fruit itself is of no more value than half 

 the quantity of a better size. Then, too, the tree is often injured, so much 



so as to cause it to lose a 

 year or two recovering. It 

 is better to be satisfied with 

 a small quantity of fruit, 

 and this judicious pruning 

 brings about. The Prairie 

 Farmer advocates the fol- 

 lowing system of pruning 

 peach trees: " The main 

 branches of a young tree 

 should be, early in spring, 

 cut back to eighteen inches, 

 being careful to leave on 

 them any sub-branches 

 near their base. The next 

 spring the resulting, or 

 next crop of branches, 

 should be cut back in about 

 the same way, and sub- 

 branches half of them cut 

 clear away, leaving every 

 other one, and those not cut 

 away cut back one-thii-d or 

 one-half. The summer after 

 this the trees should give a 

 splendid crop of fine fruit 

 that will need no thinning. 

 The after cutting back and 

 pmning should bo after the same general plan, thinning out and cutting back 

 the upper and outer branches, but never thinning out the small branches 

 near the base of the large branches, except as above. As the trees grow 

 older it will be necessary to cut back and thin out more, year by year, and, 

 eventually, it will be necessary to cut back half the main branches near 

 their base at some point just above wliei-e a thrifty young twig is growing, 

 so as to form a vigorous head." 



Necessary Precnutions After Pruning. — After pruning the orchard, 

 care should be taken to clean up and burn all the brush before the embryo 

 insects harboring in it have time to mature. The loose bark should also be 

 scraped off and burned, and every cluster of the eggs of the tent caterpillar 

 be removed betimes and cast into the fire, Atteutiou to these mattexn will 

 save a great deal of vexation and Iomh, 



