40 W. VA. AGE. EXPERIMENT STATION [Bulletin 141 



undergoing the additional hardship of enthusiastic but misguided 

 pruning. In this case the trees are still healthy and although they 

 contain considerable dead wood and are making a very poor growth, 

 may be brought back into vigorous production by careful manage- 

 ment. One point that should be considered before restoring an 

 orchard is the varieties it contains. In some of the old home or- 

 chards, the number of worthless commercial varieties is so great that 

 it would not pay to rejuvenate the orchard. 



Method of Procedure. 



THINNING THE TREES. The first step in the restoration of an 

 orchard is to thin out the number of trees it they stand too thick. 

 If the branches interlace and the lower limbs are dying it is an 

 indication that the orchard is too closely planted and would be 

 benefitted by the removal of part of the trees. One should first 

 make a rough map or plat of the orchard (fig. 2) showing the miss- 

 ing, weak or undersized trees, and then the thinning should be 



+ X + X 



O MISSING TREES, ^e UNDESIRABLE TPEES. x.+GOOO TREES. 



Thinning an orchard so as to take out as many undesirable or missing: 

 ". The double lined trees are allowed to remain. 



arranged so that as many as possible of these trees will be removed. 

 Trees number 2, 4, 6, 8, etc., in the first row and number 1, 3, 5, 

 7. etc., in the second row should be taken out, or stated in another 



