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with, and in this climate the heat is very liable to burn the body of the 

 tree. A good idea is to set up a shake on the southwest side of the tree 

 and stick it in the ground to shade the body of the tree and avoid sunburn. 

 One thing I would like to call attention sometimes where trees are allowed 

 to grow very thick in the nursery, they will not form any buds for a foot 

 or fifteen or eighteen inches high, except a few right around the bottom 

 near the cicatrix or point of union between the bud and the stock. We 

 find this frequently the case, and then it is utterly impossible the first year 

 to form the head of your tree, but some of those buds that come out near 

 the bottom will start and grow and above that is the dead stock sticking 

 up there, and all a person can do is to let this branch that starts out grow 

 during the season, and next winter cut off the dead tree down to that and 

 make your tree out of this branch that starts up from the bottom ; but care 

 must be taken that the sprout does not start below the bud, for then you 

 will have a seedling. You cut away the dead tree and train up that branch 

 that is left and then treat it as you would a year old tree, and all that is 

 lost is a year's growth on the tree. 



Mr. Rock: In our business we are governed by what our customers w T ant. 

 We clean them out about six inches above the ground, and sell them that 

 way, and the buyers afterwards train them to suit themselves. If we sell 

 a lot of trees to go to Washington Territory or Oregon, we sell them four 

 feet high, and here or in Vacaville, a foot above the ground; for Watson ville 

 or Santa Cruz, about three feet high. 



Mr. Gray: The question was as to trimming the laterals when a tree 

 wants to be cut off about fourteen inches high. 



Mr. Rock: We generally leave them on, unless they get too large, when we 

 shorten them in. We generally clean up about six inches above the buds, 

 in the season, until we see whether we have the seedlings or a budded tree 

 that we sell to other people. 



Mr. Hatch: Do you ever top your trees in the nursery row? 



Mr. Rock: No, we never do, unless it is the second year; when we don't 

 sell them we top them about two feet high. 



Dr. Kimball: In different parts of the State they have different methods 

 of treating and pruning their trees. I am acquainted more or less with 

 Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Contra Costa, and Sonoma Counties, and my own 

 county, Alameda. The custom in Alameda, with very few exceptions, is 

 to train trees so as to get them about three feet high. Some men come 

 with the habits of the East, and cut the trees for four feet high, and shape 

 the trees so the wind will not sway or bend the limb. In our country 

 around the bay we have no extreme heats as the people of the Sacramento 

 Valley, and in consequence of that, and to facilitate the cultivation of the 

 ground, they prune to get something more as they like it, of a tree shape, 

 instead of a shrub shape, starting it from the ground. I know it is a ques- 

 tion that some of our orchardists are beginning to consider quite seriously, 

 as to whether it would not be a saving of ladders and labor in picking and 

 pruning, to start the trees nearer the ground, say eighteen inches; many 

 of our most experienced orchardists are now cutting them from eighteen 

 inches to two feet, especially with cherries, as cherries make more of an 

 upright growth; but the apple and pear are almost universally trimmed 

 up to two feet, and many places to three feet and a half, giving a better 

 opportunity in plowing to get nearer the tree, and also rendering it a little 

 more convenient in passing around the trees with wagons or carts, and 

 gathering the fruit or carrying off brush. So far as my opinion goes, I 

 believe in the country around the bay in this humid climate it is better 

 and more economical to train the tree up two or three feet instead of cut- 



