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cut worms and the green caterpillars with arsenical baits and 

 sprays. After a while a few leaf laterals are allowed to grow, if it 

 is feared that the crop might be injured by sun-burn.^Large-sized 



Tomatoes staked with laterals pinched off . 



and early tomatoes will thus be obtained. For home use the 

 tomato plant is seldom pruned. It bears enormously, but the fruit 

 is smaller and somewhat later in ripening. 



SUMMER PRUNING AND THINNING OF FRUIT. 



As generally understood, pruning is an operation performed in 

 the winter time, the object of which is the shaping of the plant, the 

 adjustment of its wood and of its fruit-bearing capacity, and the 

 easier management of such operations as cultivation, spraying and 

 dressing of the trees and vines, and gathering the fruit. In the 

 summer months, however, the attention given to the plants for the 

 purposes already named, are supplemented by operations which are 

 spoken of as " summer pruning." In its proper sense, summer 

 pruning consists of pinching and disbudding. 



PINCHING 



is the operation by which strong and vigorous shoots, which are out- 

 running slower growing ones, are set back in order to give those 

 other shoots a chance of catching up to the stronger ones, or of 

 diverting the flow of sap into other channels where it is wanted. 



It consists in suppressing, by nipping between the finger and 

 thumb, the tender growth of terminal shoots, without, for that 

 purpose, removing much or any of the foliage at all. It is by 



