Page:The Olive Its Culture in Theory and Practice.djvu/115

Rh nor prune it, for several years, when the good effect of this treatment will be apparent.

The top of an olive, the parts to which the sap flows with most abundance and activity, should be considered as a vigorous tree, while the lower part which receives less, as a weak tree. So the pruner should take off the strong upper branches and leave the lesser ones, and reverse the process with the lower part, lopping off the puny branches and leaving the more vigorous.

To prune in winter at a period of frost is dangerous. The limbs are exceedingly brittle at this time, and break off at the slighestslightest [sic] provocation.

When the tree is provided with sufficient branches to clothe it, the real work of the pruner begins, which is to oblige it to bear fruit. To open a tree to sun and air is not to strip it of all shade. Its leaves are necessary to prevent the scorching of tender bark and young leaves by the sun. The variety should indicate the treatment. The Spanish Manzanillo, which has been planted to some extent in California is sparse of leaf and requires the knife only to a limited degree, and then principally in cleaning rather than pruning. All pruning that is ill timed or out of season does harm, and may be an actual drawback by obstructing and impeding the natural flow of sap. Still the olive with the tremendous strides that its vegetation makes, really demands the knife. If left to itself its center becomes a mat of cris cross branches, its growth ceases, and it falls a prey to a variety of diseases. There are two classes of branches that the olive should be deprived of:

First, the irregular, the unfruitful, the diseased, the dead or dying.

Second, all useless branches, over and above what the tree is able to carry, even though they should be the fruit branches of the following year, and all the "gluttons."

An olive tree that is heavily loaded down with branches or with fruit, is in a far from healthy state and by its appearance alone