Show around TRAIN AND PRUNE YOUNG APPLE TREES commercial fruit growers are primarily interested in establishing an orchard of trees which will come into bearing beill Iii early curly which will be mechanically strong and which will produce large crops of fruit of high quality work at the north carolina experiment station indicates that thai the best system of training and pruning young ripple apple trees tree to secure these results consists largely of corrective pruning in the form of thinning out with inith a heading back heading back only here where it Is necessary to maintain the desired form of tree it has been found that the modified loader leader type of tree lends itself best to this system of pruning and to the achievement of the results sought there will need t to 0 be done some cutting on the young trees in directing their development this pruning Is primarily a training process and not one of modifying the trees f functional unction 1 commercial gro growers ers throughout the country have followed the practice of heading back soung trees during the first three or fie years under tinder the impression that they were encouraging vigorous growth and stocky trees however Ilo wever at tile the north carolina experiment peri perl ment station trees that had been lightly pruned possessed a much greater area of spur bearing wood vista than trees that lad had been heavily pruned cutting back young trees delayed the formation of fruit spurs and consequently delayed early fruitfulness trees deed some corrective pruning and groi growers ers should not go to the extreme of giving no pruning at nil all for ifa light lit pruning of a corrective nature during the first few years of a trees life to properly space the framework branches and to keep them in balance forms a more desirable tree than one that is totally if a one year old whip has been planted find and headed at 23 or 00 inches the first years growth will usually consist of an almost upright shoot produced front from the uppermost bud and four or five shorter ones arising from loner loer buds in this case two or three oliree of them well distributed about the trunk and 0 to 8 inches apart should bo be selected in adall ion to the uppermost one and the others removed it if the leader la Is properly dominant and the two scaffolds are balanced and not over 24 inches long they need not be headed back if too long or not balanced they should be cut to balance and the leader shortened en ed with tile the second pruning the leader should be treated in much the same manner the scaffold sc arrold brandies branches will probably have produced several late rals the central stem of each scaffold should be kept properly dominant either by thinning out or by heading back the laterals literals late rals two or three more scaffold branches should be selected from the main central leader and these aliese headed back it if there Is any danger of them overshadowing tile lower scaffolds in ili many cases the third pruning will provide enough scaffold branches but if not another set may be left at ilie time of the fourth pruning after enough scaffolds have been provided tile the leaders should be removed just above the top lateral scaffold and the tree opened similar to ap an open center tree subsequent pruning should maintain mal main the framework in proper balance and keep the tree open to allow entrance or of sunlight prof C D matthews chairman department of horticulture |