. Bulletin . ere a side branch has been removed is properly made. many side branches as does heading back. Also it does notseem to dwarf as much, particularly if the lateral is a stronggrowthy branch of about the same size as the main branch. As a result, cutting tolaterals can oftenbe made to shapeand train a treewithout securingthe great num-ber of side shootsand branches thatresult from aheading -backpruning. It seemsprobable that apeach growercould cut to sidebranches on bear-ing trees moreoften than iscommonly thecustom (see ). Correction ofWeak Crotches.— When two branch-es come out
. Bulletin . ere a side branch has been removed is properly made. many side branches as does heading back. Also it does notseem to dwarf as much, particularly if the lateral is a stronggrowthy branch of about the same size as the main branch. As a result, cutting tolaterals can oftenbe made to shapeand train a treewithout securingthe great num-ber of side shootsand branches thatresult from aheading -backpruning. It seemsprobable that apeach growercould cut to sidebranches on bear-ing trees moreoften than iscommonly thecustom (see ). Correction ofWeak Crotches.— When two branch-es come out atthe same placeand are of thesame size theywill eventuallyform a very weakcrotch (see ). If one ofthese two is cutback, it becomesdwarfed, whilethe branch un-pruned grows at the usual rate. The result is that the dwarfedbranch becomes the side branch and the unpruned one becomesthe main limb. Such a crotch is not weak. The most desirablemethod to handle forks is to cut off entirely the poorer Fig. 3.—The result of allowing a weak fork at the head to remain uncorrected. If the left limb of the fork had been removed or cut back heavily to a lateral when the tree was young, this weakness would have been corrected. 6 Pruning Young Trees Pruning in Relation to Growth.—Young trees often have anover-vigorous grow^th which indicates that the root system feedsthe plant too much, or, to say it in another vv^ay, the leaves do notfeed it enough. Pruning in such a case removes some of the already deficientleaf surface, retards root growth, and dwarfs the tree. This istrue even though the annual growth is increased because the in-crease is not enough to make up for the amount removed plus thenormal growth. Heavy Pruning of Young Trees.—That heavy pruning dwarfstrees and delays the time of bearing has been shown by experi-ments in Ohio and many other states. In one plot at the Ohio Ex-periment Station several apple trees, as nearly alike as possible,were set out at the
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