158 THE PEACHES OF NEW YORK 



thus to be rejuvenated the Hmbs are sawed off during the dormant season 

 to within two feet or thereabouts of the trunk. The tree will then form 

 a new head which will in a season or two set fruit-buds and bear a crop. 

 The orchard may thus very often be renewed or even re-renewed, lengthen- 

 ing its life by several seasons. In thus decapitating trees, however, one 

 season is always lost, sometimes two, and the writer questions if it is not 

 better to give the peach a " merry life and a short one " rather than resort 

 to decapitation to prolong its days. Most growers may well throw dehorn- 

 ing into the rubbish-heap of the not- worth-while. 



Occasionally one sees in the State orchards in which the top is sheared 

 to a level plane. This shearing follows a fashion, now happily going out, 

 as it cannot come from any well-thought-out design. It takes but a 

 inoinent's study of the sheared tree to see the faults of the method. Strong 

 shoots are cut back too much, weak ones not enough; superfluous shoots 

 are not removed but, to the contrary, multiplied as in shearing a hedge. 

 Heading-in some or all of the shoots may be very necessary but shearing 

 to a line — never. 



Summer-pruning is not practiced in New York peach-orchards. No 

 doubt every grower, however, as he goes about among his trees in the 

 growing season cuts back a branch outstripping its neighbors, removes 

 an occasional unruly member or one out of place, pinches here and rubs 

 there, better to train his trees to the ideal he has in mind. Certainly no 

 harm is done by such summer-pruning when the trees are strong and 

 vigorous. 



This record of pruning practices in New York cannot be closed without 

 stating that there are growers who do not prune — not only through 

 neglect but as a matter of principle. Chiefly, these are men more accus- 

 tomed to the other tree-fruits — most of which make a fair showing without 

 pruning — than to the peach. The peach can go a few years unpruned 

 without becoming an abnormal orchard-specimen but left to itself to the 

 prime of life without the reinvigorating and form-giving knife a peach- 

 orchard becomes a woeful spectacle. The limbs crowd, choke and kill 

 each other, except the strongest or those most fortunately placed, which 

 pvish aloft, bearing at their extremities sparse-foliaged, parasol-like canopies 

 of jaiuidiced foliage which furnish no protection from the blaze of the 

 sun to the bare, bark-burned, gum-covered trunk and branches. The 

 tree-tops are populotts with dead and dying twigs and do not furnish 

 sufficient nutriment for the normal development of fruit or tree. These 



