We continue our work for the season. I wouldn’t recommend doing any pruning at all, but it is a great time to sharpen your draw saw, or take a quick trip to the village and have the blacksmith straighten out your orchardist hook. When you were looking for “catterpillar” eggs, you were using the hook to draw down “almost every limb within convenient reach,” and found it was bent.
The New England Farmer and Boston Rambler
Boston, Saturday, March 1, 1851
Vol. VI, No. 9
Work For The Season (2) Pruning & Implements:
Pruning. - We consider this a very unfavorable season for pruning, and we introduce this subject for the purposes of a caution, as so many select this month for this purpose. Very small twigs may be cut from trees at any season in the year, but large limbs should not be cut off in spring; the sap oozes out, the wood turns black, and often cankers and decays. If grape vines were not pruned in fall, the sooner they are attended to in spring the better, on account of their being liable to bleed when pruned late.
Implements. - Many orchardists make and repair their own coarse implements, carts, &c., and this is the proper time to attend to these things, that they may be ready when the time for action arrives, which is near at hand. The success of a farmer depends much on having all his tools ready in due season, and having the best of every kind. With a good implement a man can do twice as much labor as with a poor one.
You saw it here: You can do twice as much labor with a good implement. Now get to work.
