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young trees. However, if pinching and disbudding can be made 
to answer a useful purpose, the beginner should guard against too 
rigidly carrying it out under every circumstance, as it often happens 
that a better root growth, and much useful shelter in the summer 
months against the ardent rays of the sun, are obtained by not too 
strictly following the rules of pinching and disbudding. 
To ulustrate the methods of nipping and of disbudding, no 
better example can be taken than that of the apricot. In the mam, 
it applies to most kinds of fruit trees. The apricot often throws 
out two or three shoots from the same knot. In shaping them a 
good deal of disbudding has to be done, as it is essential that they 
should not grow in a bunch out of the main stem. 
Supposing at planting time the young tree has been cut back 
to a stick 18 or 29 inches high, the first shoot should start 12 inches 
from the ground, and not more than three others at most should be 
left to divide the space between that height and the top of the stem. 
Around that stem these three or four branches should be so dis- 
posed as to evenly balance, all other intervening shoots being rubbed 
off as they appear. 
The first year it will be necessary to go over the trees at in- 
tervals and rub off all unnecessary shoots, thus to preserve the bal- 
ance of the tree. Only strong and vigorous shoots are pinched back, 
any general heading back tending to dwarf the trees. 
The method of cutting back the first winter has been explained 
in the course of a previous chapter. 
When the young tree starts its second year’s growth, all the 
shoots that come out on the underside of the main limbs—which 
have in the winter been cut back to 6 to 12 inches—are rubbed off, 
with the exception of two growing upward and outward on each 
limb, so as to continue the growth of the tree and maintain its 
proper balance and shape. These are the leaders and in summer 
pruning fruit trees should never be shortened, but are allowed to 
continue their straight growth. 
The following year again, when the new shoots are a few inches 
long, they are again thinned down to two leading ones on each 
branch, all lateral growths and water shoots which tend to throw 
the tree out of shape being rubbed off. In doing so care must be 
taken not to take off the fruit spurs. Thus a strong tree is built 
up, with sturdy limbs, directed in an upward and outward direction, 
and capable of carrying a heavy load of fruit, well distributed 
around those limbs. The third year a few apricots will ripen, and 
after they have been gathered the trees are gone over and topped. 
This operation favours the formation of fruit spurs, and, more- 
over, prevents the dying back of the branches, which, more especi- 
ally with stone fruit trees, is a common occurrence when pruned 
in the depth of a wet winter, at a time when the sap is dormant and 
its healing power is not so marked. This-done, it only remains 
