1907.] Pruning of Newly-Planted Fruit Trees. 663 



the one is ^ood soil, the other is a wide, open head of branches, 

 capable of carrying a considerable quantity of fruit. Early 

 pruning after planting will not compensate for bad soil — -nothing 

 can do that — but it will supplement it. It will encourage the 

 lower buds to break strongly, and if the knife is put through just 

 above an outer bud, a new leader will push, the direction of 

 which is away from the centre of the tree and into the free air, 

 where it can extend without interfering with its neighbours. 

 " Upwards and outwards " should be the pruner's motto. 



What the nurseryman calls a " transplanted fruiting bush 

 or pyramid " will probably be three to five years old, and 

 have fruit spurs on the lower parts of the main branches. It 

 would certainly be a pity to cut such trees hard back to the 

 main stem, but the leading shoots should be shortened (cutting 

 in all cases to a bud on the outside), the breastwood or laterals 

 pruned in, and if the tree blooms and sets a crop, the fruits 

 severely thinned. Untransplanted standards should be treated 

 still more drastically, the leaders being shortened to a quarter of 

 their original length. 



It has been mentioned that an exception to the rule of prun- 

 ing after planting may be made in the case of trees planted in 

 the spring. Careful observers have noted that where trees 

 planted in spring have been pruned at once they have broken 

 into growth very badly. This has been specially observable if 

 the weather has been bleak following the pruning. In what 

 are called the " late districts " of Kent — that is, on the strong 

 soils of the Weald— growers are almost unanimous in agreeing 

 that if a fruit tree is not planted until the spring the cutting 

 back should be deferred to the following season, though if 

 planted in autumn it should be promptly pruned. 



That spring-planted trees do break badly if subjected to the 

 knife immediately they are put in may be accepted as a fact, 

 but the reason for this is not altogether clear, and the follow- 

 ing suggestion must be taken for what it is worth. The first 

 active movement of the sap in spring carries it past the lower 

 buds (that is, those nearest to the roots) to the upper ones. 

 That it does concentrate near the tips rather than near the 

 base of the shoots is certain, because the top buds always 

 start to grow long before the bottom ones. If the shoots are 



