PRUNING. 



I have already elsewhere remarked that the 

 peach really requires very little of what is gener- 

 ally understood as pruning or trimming after the 

 head of the tree is properly formed, except to keep 

 all sprouts or shoots cut or rubbed off as they ap- 

 pear springing from the roots at the collar of the 

 tree or from the main body. The first pruning or 

 trimming is to the young tree, after it arrives from 

 the nursery and before planting, which has been 

 fully described. The system of shortening the 

 branches and limbs as practised among amateurs, 

 gardeners and small growers, though employed to 

 but a limited extent, if judiciously applied, is pro- 

 ductive of very satisfactory results. It is, indeed, 

 but a counterpart to plowing, which is a shorten- 

 ing in of the roots ; both performing important 

 parts in perpetuating thrift, productiveness and 

 life of the tree, and more particularly in dis- 

 eased districts, and under the present system of 

 peach growing which has undergone but little 

 change of importance for the past fifty years at 

 least, the tree for a little time producing, though 

 holding out but a false hope, then lingering and 

 dying under its fatal disease the yellows. In such 

 cases this double cutting in by the plow at the 



