176 



TWENTY-EIGHTH FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 



Passing from the general to the particular, a few details further will 

 suffice to make the method clear. 



How shall the pruner, having got out the brush and cut off the 

 upstarts, distinguish among the outgrowing branches the ones to be 

 pruned away, that the best may remain and be given their freedom ? 

 Mainly by their helpless situation. If the sap has left certain branches 

 for a freer flow in others, as shown by their appearance of thrift, the 

 first must be relentlessly cut away. If this does not give room enough, 

 thin the remainder. With care, no large openings need be made, save 

 sometimes by taking out large upright growths, which, destined -to ruin 

 the tree as a bearer of prime fruit, should be cut out as soon as dis- 

 covered. 



This way of pruning provides locations for the much prized inside 

 oranges — not the pale, insipid, easily puffing ones that grow in darkness, 

 but those that grow within the shelter of the foliage that has an inner 

 and an outer wall, permeable to sifted rays of light and currents of air. 



The work having been all done within at first, the outer circumference 

 now demands some attention. Pruning here should be light, for it is 

 on dangerous ground. The orange tree is a sun-loving plant, and its 

 outer leaves should be treated with great respect. Heavy one-sided 

 growth should be diminished and symmetry be sought for. 



If it is desirable to cut, as is often the case, the shoots that are too 

 long, and to prepare them for future fruiting, a mere clip at the ends or 

 a division among the small leaves near the origin of a shoot will 

 result in new shoot growth from each leaf axil remaining, while, if the 

 cut is made elsewhere, only a cluster of long shoots will follow. 



If the tree is aging, renewal pruning is advisable, which is done by 

 cutting back unthrifty terminals. 



In thus advocating pruning in a definite and easily followed way, 

 there is no intent to go counter to any of " the holy laws of nature," as 

 some critics may charge, but rather to indicate methods that will render 

 these laws operative in order that best fruiting may result. 



MR. CARROLL B. SMITH. With reference to Professor Paine's 

 paper about pruning to improve the orange, the principle that he has 

 there stated, that light admitted by cutting out influences the new 

 growth, should guide every one in the use of the knife. I cite as illustra- 

 tion a honeysuckle vine against a house, the inside of which is all dead 

 wood, while the outside is healthy and green. Also the Baronio 

 system of pruning the lemon. Light is let in at the top, and the new 

 growth is violent and uncontrollable. If the tips of limbs about the 

 outside of the tree are cut off, growth is stimulated at the points where 

 the cut was made, and the whole tree soon blanketed with surface 

 growth which shuts out the light and causes a formation of dead wood 

 on the inside, just as the side of a house does with the honeysuckle vine. 



