Thinning of the Winesap. 15 
any rate, when severe freezing of the wood has taken place, it is 
well to wait until the buds have started so that one will know where 
to prune. Even then peach trees may be so injured as to live 
months, or in some cases a vear or two before dying from the efi- 
fects of freezing. The so called “collar girdle” seems to be one 
that does not show until some time after the freezing has taken 
place. Trees injured by freezing very often need to be severely cut 
back. A peach tree will stand a heavier heading back than the apple 
and for this reason can be pruned very severely, so that it will have 
a chance to put forth a new growth which, when properly pruned, 
can take the place of the old head. 
One of the very important things to watch in connection with 
both young apple and peach trees is that of irrigation. It is a very 
good plan to get all of the growth possible during the early part of 
the growing season, so that the trees may have a chance to harden 
off during late summer. In order to do this a young orchard should 
never be irrigated later than the first of August, and in many cases 
it would be better if the last summer irrigation took place not later 
than July 15th, the time varying somewhat with location, kind or 
soil, etc. Then, if no moisture comes in the latter part of October 
or first of November, it is a good thing to irrigate. If the trees are 
not properly ripened or hardened off there is much danger that they 
will be killed back more or less by the first fall freeze. The writer 
has seen cases of young peach trees where the terminals were killed 
back for several inches as early as the middle of October. This was 
in an orchard where the irrigation was kept up until some time in 
September. The orchardist’s object was to mature a crop of corn 
that he was raising between the peach tree rows. Ey spring every 
peach tree in this orchard was killed to the ground. It often hap¬ 
pens that a peach tree has enough vitality and plant food in the 
trunk and limbs to leaf out and may even bloom, and at the same 
time it may be so injured by freezing as to be girdled somewhere 
on the trunk so that in a little while the whole tree dies. 
In the case of young apple trees, where the top is frozen back 
to the trunk, or where the trunk is injured by sun scald and freez¬ 
ing, it is sometimes possible to insert a scion by the cleft or kerf 
method and thus growing a new top. in top working of this kind 
be sure that the top is cut off below the injured portion i. e., have 
the stock of good, sound wood. It is often possible to top work a 
young tree in this manner so that a single year's growth would al¬ 
most equal that which was killed. In a case like this, where a tree 
has a well established root system, it does not take long to form a 
good top, but one must be careful about letting it grow too late in 
the season, as growth like this takes more time to harden off than 
when slower growth is made. In young trees which have under- 
