1. There is a great deal more pruning done than is needful or
healthful. Our hot summers and strong growth of wood make every leaf
on the tree precious. Dead limbs should be taken out. Where the tree
is really _tangled_ with wood, thin out. Where branches are rubbing
across each other _severely_, take off one of them. Grub up _every_
water-sprout from the roots. If you can avoid it, do not use them for
trees, for the tree thus obtained will inherit the same propensity of
sending up water-shoots. Sometimes, in scarcity of stock, they are
used rather than to have none, but it is then only a lesser of two
evils.
2. TIME OF PRUNING.—There is a bad practice abroad of pruning before
the leaves are out. English books direct to prune in February, and we
suspect that the custom sprang up at the East from the old country
example. It is not safe for us to follow the _specific_ processes of
Great Britain or the Continent. OUR OWN _well settled experience is to
be our rule of practice_.
There is no better month in the year to prune, _than that month in
which the tree is making the most wood_. It is plain that the sooner a
wound heals the better; and equally plain, that a tree which is
_growing_ will heal a wound quicker than an inactive tree. All the
matter which goes to form wood, or to form the granulations by which a
cut heals, comes from the _downward_ current of sap, or sap which has
been elaborated in the leaf. Of course when the tree has the most
leaves, and the leaves are preparing the greatest quantity of _proper
juice_ or elaborated sap, that is the time for pruning, because the
time for healing. In this climate we have preferred the last of May
for spring pruning, and the last of August for summer pruning—the
exact week varying as the season is forward or backward.
3. INSTEAD OF PRUNING AT THIS EARLY PERIOD, LET TREES BE THOROUGHLY
SCRAPED AND SCOURED.—A three-sided scraper, such as butchers use to
clean their blocks with, or any convenient implement, may be applied
to the trunk and large branches with force sufficient to take off the
_dry, dead_ bark. Only this is to be removed. Take soft soap and
reduce it by _urine_ to the consistence of paint. With a stiff
shoe-brush rub the whole trunk and the limbs as far up as is
practicable. The bark will grow smooth and glossy; insect eggs will be
entirely destroyed; all moss and fungous vegetation removed, and the
bark stimulated and made healthier. THIS IS BETTER THAN ANY WHITEWASH,
and just as convenient.
4. Lime is better used as follows: remove the earth from the trunk,
and put about half a peck to each tree. Every spring, spread and dig
in the old lime, and put new in its place. Unleached ashes are good to
be dug in around a tree. If your soil is calcareous, full of lime,
these applications are not needful. Thoroughly rotted manure, or
better yet, black vegetable mold may be dug in liberally, and will
supply the soil with nutriment, and the roots will find their way in
with great facility.
5. When a tree is manured, remember that the _ends_ only of the roots
take up nourishment, and that the ends of the roots are not found
close by the _trunk_. We often see heaps of manure piled about the
_trunk_, and the ends of the roots are three yards or more distant
from it. You might as well put your fodder down at your cattle’s hind
legs, and wonder that they did not get fat on it. Treat your trees as
you do your stock—put their food where their mouths are. YOUNG
ORCHARDS are better without stimulating manure. Let the soil be
mellowed, and then give the trees their own time, and if they do not
bear quite as soon, they will live longer and be less subject to
disease.