Page:A Practical Treatise on Olive Culture, Oil Making and Olive Pickling.djvu/32

, for no one could ignore the advantages it presents.

As for pruning there are many divergent opinions. An olive tree never pruned bears heavily one year, and gives but little fruit in the year following, as if it needs rest for its laborious efforts; but by judicious pruning it is brought to give regular yearly crops.

Du Breuil tells us on that subject that the berries of the olive that is not pruned are very numerous, and that they remain on the tree until the end of winter, so that during the fertile years all the sap has gone to supply their growth preventing new bearing branches from forming for the following year. It is thus that the fructification of the olive trees not pruned is most always biennial.

The pruning of the olive tree should have mostly for its object to decrease the height of its head so as to render the picking of the crop more easy; to give to that head such a form as to allow light and ventilation in all its parts; to suppress every year a certain number of the bearing branches so that the sap can feed better those that remain, and that by the development of new branches it may assure a good average crop every year.

Young olive trees are generally left to themselves for the first two years following their planting, pruning being applied only in their third.