192 The Fruit-Growers Guide-Book 



rieties, and will need to be opened out more by cutting to 

 buds on the outer sides of the limbs. With sour kinds the 

 trees will need little pruning after the third or fourth year. 

 All that may be needed will be to cut out branches which 

 cross or which are dead. 



With sweet cherries there is a tendency to an excessive 

 amount of wood growth, and it is not unusual for such 

 kinds of trees to produce five feet of new wood in a sea- 

 son. This is especially true of young trees. For planting 

 in the orchard one-year-old trees are most desirable, and 

 they are cut off at about 24 to 36 inches of the ground. A 

 number of side branches will be sent out, and only four or 

 five of these should be retained, providing that many can 

 be had properly distributed around the stem and widely 

 separated from each other.- Unless the branches forming 

 the head of a cherry tree are well distributed it will result 

 in a tree that is subject to gummosis. Sweet cherries are 

 especially subject to this trouble and every care needs to 

 be exercised to prevent it. Where the branches of the 

 head come out too close together cracking and splitting 

 will result, not only making them subject to gummosis, but 

 possibly causing them to break off. 



In case the sweet cherries are injured by the winter 

 cold, let them stand unpruned until about time the buds 

 start, then prune in the same manner as for peach trees 

 which have been frozen. 



The Bing cherry is especially liable to grow late in the 

 summer and go into winter carrying its leaves, and pos- 

 sibly not having formed its terminal bud before frost. The 

 cambium layer will be so soft and tender that it will be 

 completely killed, yet the tree will start into growth only 

 "to die early in the summer. Do not permit the trees to 

 grow late, but harden them up by a judicious amount of 

 summer pruning, so that they will shed their leaves early. 

 In the irrigated sections late growth is often caused by 

 irrigating too late in the summer. Under irrigation it is 

 quite easy to regulate the amount of wood that will be pro- 

 duced on trees by regulating the supply of water. Late 

 applications will make the trees grow late, but by shutting 



