54 



A sine qua non, as far as thorough work is concerned, is the 

 Californian Pruning Saw. This is a frame saw, which should 

 also be bought with a spare blade, and it is stocked by the leading 

 ironmongers in Cape Town and elsewhere. 



REPORTED TENDENCY OF FARMERS, WHO AT ONE TIME 

 BELIEVED IN IT, TO NOW NEGLECT PRUNING. 



Several thinking fruit-growers have remarked to us the last 

 few years that there is a tendency among growers who took up 

 the pruning of fruit trees some few years ago, and who, after 

 keeping it up on the lines advocated by experts, are inclined to 

 now condemn it as tending to prevent their trees coming into 

 bearing. To such we would say, do not under any circumstances 

 make up your mind that pruning in Africa is either a mistake or 

 is unnecessary. We attribute this result to one of two causes, either 

 the grower has started pruning a tree which was perhaps four to 

 six years old, and was either already in bearing or was just com- 

 ing into bearing, or the planter has pruned his tree from the time 

 of setting, and he expects to get his fruit too soon. In the first 

 of these instances, beginning the necessary cutting when the tree 

 is already established will certainly have the effect of retarding 

 its coming into bearing; and we consider from the result of our 

 own personal experience in many different classes of trees (and 

 we have had it in thousands of cases), that it is a mistake to do 

 on such trees a heavy cutting out and heading back. If it is 

 necessary to tackle the shaping of such trees, and it generally is 

 so, do the requisite opening out and heading back in one year, and 

 after that for the next season do very little cutting indeed, doing 

 (in anything but a peach) almost all that is required in the first 

 summer, so that the winter cutting will be almost nothing, as one 

 must remember that nature preserves a balance between the roots 

 of the tree and the head, which she takes care to maintain ; there- 

 fore, if one goes on everlastingly cutting at the head, nature will 

 continue to push out new wood and throw off the blossom without 

 their setting owing to the strength in the flow of sap. No ! make 

 your heavy cutting in one year to bring the tree into some shape 

 and for bearing and for remaining some years in an orchard 

 where the plough and the cultivator must be worked to economise 

 the labour of keeping clean and loose. In the matter of the 

 second case, growers expect too much from their trees when 

 young. We see on referring to Australian Government reports 

 that some few years ago there was a great boom in fruit tree 

 planting. bu f that many growers have thrown up the sponge, the 



