54 



food supply for the orchard. But I have ample justification in so 

 doing for two reasons : Your own Agricultural Experiment Sta- 

 tion is doing more in the investigation of these problems than any 

 other institution that I know about. Preliminary results have al- 

 ready been published and are available in bulletins from your sta- 

 tion. Then, too, enough has already been said to show that the 

 ''fertility question" of any orchard is a very local question and the 

 only place it can be answered for any one of you is right in your 

 own orchard. The bulletins of your station suggest how to go 

 about answering such questions for yourselves. I therefore pass 

 to the next fundamental tenet of orchard management — pruning. 



Relatively, few orchards the country over, are properly pruned. 

 In fact, a surprisingly large number are not pruned at all. It will 

 help at the outset to have clearly in mind some of the more import- 

 ant reasons for pruning. They may be stated as follows : 



1. To keep the trees shapely and within bounds. 



2. To remove dead or interfering Ijranches. 



3. To make trees more stocky. 



4. To thin the fruit. 



5. To open the tree tops to admit air and sunlight. 



6. To make thorough spraying possible. 



7. To facilitate harvesting. 



8. To reduce the struggle for existence in the tree tops. 



9. To produce more fruit of better quality. 



With this enumeration of the reasons for pruning I do not 

 kno\^' that very much more need be said, though each reason given 

 of course might be considerably amplified. If the truths contained 

 in the several captions given are self-evident, as most of them must 

 be, to take time to comment about them is to uselessly multiply 

 words. 



If a word of explanation is needed at all, it is in regard to 

 Caption 8. Perhaps few realize that there is a struggle for exist- 

 ence going on in the top of a crowxled tree to^) but such is the case. 

 The fingers of one's hand are about as close together as they can 

 w^ell be but they are not in the way of one another and there is no 

 struggle or competition going on among them for room or for food 

 supply. Each has its own allotted amount which is sufficient. If 

 one suffers for lack of nourishment or in anv other way, all the 

 others suffer with it. Not so in a dense tree top ! Every limb 

 and branch is competing. with every other limb and branch, every 

 bud with every other bud for room and sunlight and air and food. 

 Often the struggle in this competition becomes so sharp that whole 

 limbs die for lack of room and sunlight and plant food. The com- 

 petition is a merciless one. Now if we keep the tops sufficiently 

 thinned out, all is peace. There is no struggle to the death and 

 .as a result every bud has food enough to deposit within its folds 

 a goodly supply besides making its normal growth; we have a 

 well-fed tree and fruit buds strong and vigorous enough to with- 

 stand many vicissitudes of climate that would kill outright weaker 

 buds. 



