24 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Fig- 1. 
Suggestions on Pruning Fruit Trees. 
BY A. 0. MOORE, NEW-YORK. 
A correct system of pruning, more than any 
other one thing, is requisite to enable us to pro¬ 
gress in fruit culture. Nothing so surely distin¬ 
guishes the good cultivator from the unpracticed, 
as the handling of the pruning knife and the trim 
»f his trees. No means within the knowledge of 
man is so effective, or gives us such control over 
the whole economy of the tree as good pruning. 
Where well understood, and where a knowiedge 
of the principles of vegetable growth is added to 
intelligent practice, pruning is made to produce 
the most varied and even opposite results. We 
prune to diminish nutritive vigor, and prune to in¬ 
crease it; to diminish the generative or fruit-pro¬ 
ducing tendency, and to increase it; to encourage 
the feeble and reduce the over luxuriant; by a 
variation in the same process, under favorable 
circumstances, we can paralyse the leaf bud, pro¬ 
ducing thereby a blossom bud ; and we can stim¬ 
ulate the blossom hud until a leaf-bud will be devel¬ 
oped. Surely, an instrument of such power can¬ 
not be lightly esteemed. 
In applying myself to the task of criticising tire 
general mode of cultivating fruit trees, I have se¬ 
lected for my “ text,” a tree which would be gen¬ 
erally esteemed a fine specimen of an old apple 
tree. I have purposely chosen from Nature one 
that is above the average in good shape, size and 
thrift, so as to show the tendency, even under 
"avorable circumstances, toward that form which 
subjects the cultivator to great inconveniences in 
the management of the tree, and which is most 
unfavorable to continued vigor and productive¬ 
ness. 
I shall consider that I have done a good -work, 
and quite enough for the limits of one newspaper 
article, if I can convince my readers that the 
mode of pruning which is almost universal in this 
country, even it. what are termed well-managed 
orchards, is wrong, and I may be excused for not 
attempting at present more than this. To give 
the better method founded upon and adapted to 
American experience and practice, should not be 
lightly undertaker 
Taking the tree which forms the principle sub¬ 
ject of the engraving above, (fig. 1,) as the type 
of the form which the usual treatment of fruit 
trees produces, you will notice that the whole 
growth of young wood and leaves is in the upper 
part of the tree. This occurs in obedience to a law 
of vegetable growth, which gives greater develope- 
ment to the terminal buds, and to those shoots 
which are nearest to the extremities of the 
branches. This tendency is very much increased 
by the pruning which has been practiced by the 
cultivator, who evidently had a very indefinite 
idea of the objects to be obtained by this opera¬ 
tion. Yet, having heard from his infancy that 
fruit trees should be pruned, with such general¬ 
ities for his guide in the way of instructions, as 
“ thin out the top,” “ take out weak or decaying 
branches,” ‘‘keep the head of the tree open,” 
&c., &c., he has applied axe and saw to the limbs 
most conveniently reached, especially as he finds 
these to be the weaker branches. 
Observe the lower limbs of any tree of over 20 
years growth, and you will see that they have com¬ 
menced to take the same elbowed shape represent¬ 
ed in the engraving. While the tree is young and 
growing rapidly, these lower branches have a fine 
upward curve, the concave side being toward the 
centre of the tree, and having never met with any 
check in their natural 
aspirations toward the 
light and free air, they 
are long and slender. 
Fig. 2 may be con¬ 
sidered as a fair speci¬ 
men of a young apple 
tree under this man¬ 
agement. The only 
pruning it has received 
being to cut away con¬ 
flicting branches and 
thin out the top. It 
/ig. 2. has never yet borne 
a full crop, though a few apples have annu¬ 
ally gladdened the cultivator’s eyes for several 
years. At length comes a good “ apple year,” 
and the tree is loaded with fruit. The ex- 
tremeties of the branches doing double duty, the 
weight bears the long slender limbs'heavily down¬ 
ward and outward. The farmer, perhaps, grudg¬ 
ingly removes a little of the inferior fruit and props 
up the freighted limbs. The crop is removed at 
maturity, and fig. 3 will represent the altered 
shape of the tree. The next year being “ a poor 
apple year,” as of course it must be, the tree has 
nothing else to do but to grow, and as far as i 
Fig. 3. 
can, to repair damages. The effect of bending 
so violently the branches, is to compress the sap- 
vessels where the curve is made, and the sap 
finding its way to the extremities of those branch¬ 
es with great difficulty, new shoots are forced 
from the upper side of the curve, into which rush¬ 
es all the sap intended for the bowed branches. 
These shoots then grow vigorously, and being of 
a coarse, rank growth, come slowly into bearing. 
Fig. 4 will show the tree in this phase of its 
development. As these shoots bear no fruit for a 
number of years, they grow rapidly, and the old ex 
tremities continuing to bear every other year with 
a deficient supply of sap, soon become exhaust 
ed, and in pruning are lopped off at the foot of the 
vigorous new shoots. In this way are produced 
Fig. 4. 
these elbows, leaving the blackened stump of 
the limbs unhealed and unliealable. These up¬ 
right shoots having at last grown into maturity, 
in their turn, bear an over crop, and being neglect¬ 
ed repeat the process of bending and throwing up 
new shoots from their constricted branches until 
the tree has no longer the requisite vitality to re 
new its growth. 
As a summary of the evils which result from 
this shape, so common as to be nearly universal 
in our orchards, and of which our engraving is 
certainly not an exaggeration, I would enumerate 
the following objections: 
First .—The loss of much valuable space for 
fruit bearing. The circumference of the tree, be¬ 
ing a dense mass of leaves and branches, shades 
and confines the interior and lower parts so as to 
deprive them of their share of sunlight and air, 
thus causing them to become sterile and vacant. 
Second .—The best fruit spurs will, under proper 
management, be grown near the trunk of the tree 
and its main branches. These being suppressed, 
the tree bears principally upon the less desirable 
