Farm and Garden.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 447, 10 November 1904, Page 2

Farm and Garden.

ORIGINAL ARTICLES. PPUMimTTREES. IN pruning orchards of apples and pears that have been neglected for some year's it is better to take two or threo years. In heavy pruning of the apple, after years of neglect, thero will be an excess of water sprouts. The best way to get rid of those is by going over the trees while the shoots are tender and brushing them off with the hand. Heavy pruning of the pear, after a long period of rest, will bring a heavy new growth with an excess of sap, which, if weather conditions are right, is apt to sour and cause fire-blight. With the poach tree and tho grape vine the very opposite of this lino of treatment may bo seen—that is, tho very best results have been obtained by thoroughly pruning and thinning in one season. But the better way is to prune every year and enough to give plenty of light and circulation of airtwo necessary adjuncts for high colour and quality of fruit. That also lessons the i

tendency to fungoua diseases, and the spraying can bo dono with better effect. With slow-growing, backward trees, and where a vigorous new growth is wanted, heavy pruning will bring the desired results. The cherry tree is usually one of the least pruned fruit trees.- The wounds do not heal over as readily as with other fruit trees, although they are headed back to some extent on the strong vigorous growing varieties of sweet cherries. Many people adopt a system of heading back while the trees are young, thus giving the root a chance to enlarge and get a firm hold. The body and main branches become stocky and better able to hold up the fruit whon it gets into bearing. With tho apple and pear that is not so necessary after the trees get well into bearing, but with the peach always, as we must have tho strong vigorous buds which come with tho new growth to get best results. To the successful .peach-grower the practice of thinning has become a necessity, some people even going over their orchards the second time. By a judicious system of pruning and thinning the fruit-grower is far more sure of an average crop of fine fruit every year, instead of having a heavy crop of inferior fruit that may break the trees down and injure the orchard at intervals of from two to five years. The fruit is much larger and finer under this system ; and it would be well to remember that all times it is tho large, fancy fruit that brings the best price, and that is what most people strive for.