224 
THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
[Oct. 1, 1900. 
and soon begin to grow new wood if they are not 
heavily plucked too soon after pruuing. 
Letter No. 15 by "Gustos Pamperio Horti " is 
very strong against hard pruning, and contrasts tea 
pruning with that of cofi:ee, much to the disadvan- 
tage of the former. Did it strike him that the im- 
mediate effect of injuiious pruning is to give a larger 
crop of tea leaf, whereas the opposite result would 
come about with coffee bushes. . If the manager has 
pruned year by year "for leaf" i.e. lightly, the 
yield gradually gets less; the only remedy is to " cut 
down." But in coffee as soon as a branch or leading 
stem, for whatever it was called) ceased to yield 
it was cut out, and the rest of the bush treated in 
a decent manner. Tea is not treated in this way 
because it will respond immediately to the knife, 
whereas to cut down a coffee garden means the loss 
of the crop for that year. 
Letter No. 16 by " VV. I. G." says:— "Tea is not 
nearly so severely pruned as it was a few years ago." 
Letter No 17 by '-Incog" says:— "Tea occasionally 
requires heavy pruning but this is much overdone.' 
Letter No. 19 by " G. H. G." says;— "I have often been 
told by those who have had experience that flavour 
is greatly lost by cutting down old bushes to 12 to 
15 inches after they have reached too great a height 
after successive prunings. I have never heard that 
such bushes ever regain their original flavour." Letter 
No 27 by "S." says;—" Neither does severe pruning 
affect the quality, only shortens the life of the bush ". I 
agree here because I believe that each cutting down 
teduces the vigour of the bush, and that this accounts 
for the many played out estates which have been 
abandoned. Letter No. 33 bv "J- J." says:—" I am 
against severe pruning, medium is what I do, cut- 
ting down once in 6 years or so." The point of the 
matter is that discriminate pruning costs money year 
bv year, and to save this expense, the bushes are 
cut down periodically. It cost little to cut down the 
■bush. The relative cost would be as follows :— (1) cut- 
tinJ down every 6th year @ E2 per acre^ 6 cuttings 
out" of old wood (Tt R2 per aore=m2. Take a garden 
of 1000 acres—cutting down cost 112,000, cutting out 
■costs K12,000. Here is a pa'pable gain in solid coin. 
•But what has the saving cost ? First of all one or 
two invoices of thoroughly bad tea, say 1,000 maunds 
of tea @: R2 bslow average value. This means R10,0C0. 
■■Then a reduced outturn for a few years until the 
-bnah has re-grown to its full sizes which may 
be put down at anything up to R30,000. The de- 
'ceptive part of cutting down is that a portion only 
of the estate is cut down each year and so no idea of 
■'the actualloss either in quality or yield cin be formed. 
In some rare cases a manager advises, or is ad- 
'vised, to cut down the bulk of the estate and tJicn 
'follows one memorable year of bad quality and 
"short yield, but still no lesson is learned from 
• this It is only hoped that the next cuttmg-dowu 
may be long deferred, or done regularly on a fixed 
'proportion of the estate, so that the directors and 
• shareholders shall not notice it. If you will not 
.pay the estate extra R2 or R3 per acre per annum to 
' have good pruning done, you will have to pay for 
it in steady loss, and eventually will lose the whole 
• estate. Money saved on pruning is spent in dig- 
ging the grave of the estate. 
Letter No. 37 by "L." says— " (Severe pruning) is 
'rarely resorted to; one case I know, when this was 
done gave very benefloial results, both as regards 
•yield' and at the same time quality was maintained. 
I hardly think that this refers to cutting down." 
• "L." probably means a thorough cleaning out of the 
bush leaving all the thick branches. It is quite 
impossible that cutting the bushes down to stumps 
can give Uio same yield as if those bushes had 
' been properly pruned and had not been reduced to 
Buch a state of overgrowth that they refused to 
yield. Cutting down a bush which has ceased to 
yield" will cause.it to yield .tomc leaf. But judicious 
pruning will prevent the bush from evtr getting 
into a non-yielding state. There iril/. be a succea- 
■ 9f new' branchee, if the 9ICI ones are removed 
as soon as they get too old to yield vigoroua'y." 
Letter No. 45 by "M." says: — ''Severe low pruning 
(necessitated by too close plucking and injudicious 
modes of pruning) have much to do with the falling 
off of quality." This is my own view. " Cutting down 
is necessitated by injudicious modes of pruning." 
I cannot agree that close plucking is the cause 
of it unless it has been done too soon after prun- 
ing. Give the bush time to grow enough leaf to 
carry on its proper work, and after that you can 
take all that appears if you have enough labour to do 
so. Letter No. 18 by "G." says:— "I believe that a high 
bush gives a better quality of tea than a bush pruned 
down low." The system I advocate will keep the 
bushes at one constant level. Letter No. 50 by " D." 
says — "Fields of hide bound bushes here and there 
are treated in this fashion. Severely pruned old coffee- 
land tea gets more frequent touches of this treat- 
ment as the growth generally is more mangy of this 
class of tea, and more subject to the growth of 
lichens and other pests." I do not agree with "D. " 
that lichens are one of the pests. BIoss on a tea 
branch means (I think) that the branch has ceased 
to grow, and to expand. If hard plucking deprived 
the branch of its leaf, there is not enough sap re- 
turned to make new growth of wood. The lichens 
find a surface (like a rockj which is undisturbed 
and promptly grow on it. Do you find moss on vigorous 
branches? If not it is not a disease but a sign that 
some other agency is killing that branch. It is a 
nign that the Isranch should be removed, because it 
has sto^jped expanding. 
Letter No. 53 by "L," says — "Excessive cutting Gown 
(a pernicious system fortunately fast dying out) re- 
duces the quality and the quantity for many months; 
"L. " is convinced of the necessity of judicious prun- 
ing. The whole of this letter might be printed here 
with benefit. Letter No. 66 by " Old Dimbula": — "I 
have seen ten year old tea cut down to 9 inches or a foot. 
The reason given was to get good strong healthy 
growth." Well, it took three years to grow the size the 
trees were when pruned ; the pluckings all that time 
have been a loss and the trees have not such good 
stems as they had previous to the heavy pruning. 
The trees should be pruned and not merely cut down, 
and this can't be done under R9 to RIO per acre. 
Here we have strong support to what I urge as 
the proper way to treat the bushes. I gave R2 
extra per acre as the cost of the thinning out. Old 
Dimbula give R9 to RIO as the cost of pruning 
and thinning out combined, so perhaps I should allow 
R40 per acre for cleaning out; but even this figure 
makes no practical difference In the loss from cut- 
ting down as compared with the gain of vionet/ saved 
by cutting down. I think that I have a good show 
of hands against "cutting down," but some say that 
it is necessary. I want to prove that it is not 
necessary. It can't he obviated by judicious pruning, 
which certainly costs more each year, and I think 
it necessary to have the cleaning out done separately. 
This entails more expenditure and more super- 
vision, and I think that the future good of the 
bushes has been disregarded for these two reasons. 
Both Managers and Proprietors concur hecause there 
is less expenditure and less trouble, and because the 
enormous harm done by careless pruning is not 
apparent until the time comes when the bush must 
be cut down ; and even then the harm is not noticed 
because the cost (i.e., the loss) is spread os'er 5 to 10 
years, by treating only portions of the gardens eacli 
year. If you really want to know the harm done, 
you must cut down the whole estate ; the amount 
of loss having been ascertained, can be divided by 
5 or 10, and you will then know whether judicious 
pruning is advisable, i.e., is the extra cost of good 
pruning equal to the loss from cutting down divided 
by 5 or 10. The range of 5 to 10 is given for difference 
in climate, soil, jat of plant, &a. But even here 
the calculation must not stop. At the end of 5 or 
10 years you must again cut down the whole estate. 
You will then find that the loss in yield is greater. 
And the Ijhird time of cutting down will prove 
