Healing of Wounds 179 



In the Rocky Mountain region, where the rainfall is 

 often less than eighteen inches annually, the trees have 

 barely enough moisture to maintain themselves, and they 

 have the habit of early fruiting. Cherry trees often pro- 

 duce a heavy crop at five years from the bud. Throughout 

 all this region fruit trees have such a tendency to overbear 

 that the system of pruning needs to be heavy every win- 

 ter. On the western side of the Cascade Mountains, 

 where the air is thick with humidity most of the year, the 

 trees make an excessive amount of wood growth and grow 

 so late into the fall that they are many times not suffi- 

 ciently matured and suffer more or less from winter kill- 

 ing. Under such conditions the pruning should be done 

 -so as to prevent excessive wood growth, such as a gen- 

 erous amount of summer pruning. It frequently happens 

 in the irrigated sections that where the trees are heavily 

 watered, they will make unusually long shoots each season 

 and set few fruit buds. This trouble can oftentimes be 

 corrected without resorting to special pruning. By simply 

 reducing the amount of water that is supplied to the trees, 

 the vigorous wood growth can be stopped and the trees 

 made to produce fruit buds. 



In fact the styles of pruning that must be adopted by 

 the irrigation fruit grower must of necessity be governed 

 by local conditions, and will be to a greater or less extent 

 different from that in use in the rainy districts. 



The direction in which any given branch will grow will 

 be governed by the position of the bud. In cutting off a 

 branch it should be done just over a bud or branch that 

 is on the side of the limb and pointing in the direction 

 which the new limb is to take. With young trees espe- 

 cially the selection of a bud pointing in the direction the 

 new limb is to take will enable the pruner to quickly and 

 easily get the tree into the most desirabl-e shape. 



Healing of Wounds 



The healing of large wounds is influenced by the posi- 

 tion of the wound on the plant, the length of the stump, 



