PRUNING MATURE TREES 



271 



properly. Let us suppose a tree, open at the center, with fruiting 

 wood well distributed along its main or skeleton limbs from the 

 crotch to their ends. Young trees in which three skeleton limbs 

 radiate from the trunk in spreading fashion will produce new shoots 

 at close intervals. If these new shoots are pruned alternately, be- 

 fore the middle of June, one set being allowed to grow throughout 

 the season and the other pruned to a spur, the following year the 

 unpruned shoots will bear a crop. The second year they will be 

 reduced to spurs and the alternate set will bear. Thus both late 

 and early varieties may be kept in full bearing the entire length of 

 their frame limbs. Even with this heavy pruning the greatest con- 

 venience of harvesting and spraying the low-crowned trees will 

 warrant whatever increased labor the plan involves. 



When winter pruning alone is practiced heavy growth follows. 

 Such new shoots as form on the lower parts of the crown reach 



FIG. 233 GREENSBORO TREE, SEVEN YEARS OLD, NOT SUMMER-PRUNED 



up for light, and before midsummer are crowding one another so 

 much as to overtop completely the weaker growths. By fall these 

 smaller shoots are dead, and because of lack of light very few fruit 

 buds have formed on the lower parts of the surviving shoots. Thus 

 the fruit forms toward the ends of the new wood, where it is poorly 

 supported. As the crop approaches maturity these long branches 

 bend and break beneath a weight of fruit that could have been 

 safely carried had it been placed near their bases. Summer pruning 

 evades this difficulty by thinning the new growth and giving the 

 parts remaining full sunshine, 



