42 
THE APPLE. 
the size of the tree. If it is small, as a cordon or bush, and the space 
set apart for it is correspondingly limited, and the roots are strong 
or numerous, the root pruning will be correspondingly severe. If these 
conditions are reversed, the pruning will be light in proportion. 
On no account should the roots and top be pruned simultaneously; 
root pruning gives sufficient check for the time. To prune top and 
roots together is to cripple life and vitality at both ends. Possibly 
part of the elaborated sap in the branches may find its way down to 
hasten the formation or quicken the growth of new roots. Be that, 
however, as it may, experience shows that it is as impolitic as it is 
unprofitable to prune the tops and bottoms of plants at the same time. 
II.—Sunvmer Pruning. 
Summer pruning is next in importance to root pruning. The former 
modifies growth in the making; the latter moulds it into new forms 
or removes it. It will be seen at a glance 
which is the more important. Summer 
pruning operates, of course, on the young 
wood, technically called breast wood. Each 
wood bud that breaks grows into a shoot,, 
and these, if all left to grow at will, change 
the well-ordered, skilfully trained trees into 
a tangled forest in miniature. A certain ex¬ 
tent of growth may be permitted to most or 
all these shoots. They stimulate the roots 
and fiush the tree with sap and life. But 
it is needful to remove some and stop all, or 
nearly all, of these young shoots of the cur¬ 
rent year, or breast wood, to compact fertility 
into smaller areas, post it in the best places, 
and produce it in the least time. That sys¬ 
tem of pruning that concentrates the greatest 
amount of fruit in the least space consistent 
with the health of the tree must have many 
merits, if it be not the very best. Leave 
young wood unpruned in summer, and the 
fruit buds, if any, would be found on the end 
of the growing shoots. Not only this ; but where the best buds are found 
on the highest point of the shoots, the lower ones either do not break at 
all, or are worthless if they do. Thus the fruit buds are found on the 
highest points, and the tree occupies a larger space, without being more 
productive, as is shown in the unstopped branch of Fig. 29. 
