8o WEEDING AND PRUNING. 



four feet should be the Hmit, or even a few inches less; in 

 very poor and much exposed situations three feet will be 

 found ample for all purposes. The height being deter- 

 mined on, the next point is to consider the best time for 

 topping or pruning them. By many planters the safest 

 and most sensible time for performing this operation is 

 considered to be when the tree has exceeded the height 

 it is intended to keep it at, and when the bark has become 

 brown and fully developed. Pruning should, if possible, 

 be all completed before blossoming season, except when 

 it is confined to the removal of plainly superfluous wood 

 that is past bearing, or has, perhaps, only a berry or two 

 on it, when pruning may be continued without injury or 

 inconvenience until up to the commencement of May. 

 When all these are removed it will generally be found 

 that sufficient has been done ; but on very luxuriant trees 

 the shoots growing in the right direction will be still too 

 numerous, and will require further thinning so as to 

 reduce the number to two shoots at every point of the 

 branch. If this process of handling be fully and regularly 

 attended to there will be very little and very simple work 

 for the knife to do, and the pruner will merely have to 

 remove the very driest and oldest secondaries and shorten 

 back such primaries as may be too long and whippy. 



In the old neglected trees the process is more difficult, 

 but may, with a little patience, be got into good order 

 easy and cheaply. The first thing to be done with them 

 is to cut out all secondary and tertiary branches that are 

 past bearing, and to clear out the centre of the head oi 

 the trees. The removal of this superfluous wood will be 

 followed by a sufficiently rapid growth of young wood 

 v/hich should be carefully handled, and after the next 

 crop a fair proportion of cross branches may be cut out, 

 but only to a slight extent, so as not to diminish the 



