Excerpt from Financial Aspects of Pruning Planted Slash Pine Frank A. Bennett Southeastern Forest Experiment Station Cordele Research Center, Cordele, Ga. The recent tremendous surge in the planting of southern pines will soon bring a corresponding surge of interest in the profitability of pruning. In anticipation of such interest, this paper presents some cost and return figures for pruning planted slash pine. Since the idea of pruning is to produce the maximum proportion of clear lumber, the knotty core must be held to a small diameter. This in turn means that the tree should be pruned at an early age, and preferably in two phases. Results from a studyl/ at the George Walton Experimental Forest, Dooly County, Georgia, indicate that the first phase of pruning to a height of 8 feet should be accomplished when the trees are 15 feet tall (about 5 or 6 years of age), and the second phase to a height of 17 feet when the trees are about 33 feet tall (about 5 or 6 years later). By this method the knotty core can be held to a minimum diameter of 5 inches, and after each pruning the tree is left with a crown ratio of about 50 percent, a fact which insures that little or no loss in either diameter or height growth will be incurred. What is the cost of this two-phase pruning? Records for the pruning of trees on the Experimental Forest provide a good sample of cost data. Mr. H. E. Walton, owner of the forest and cooperator with the U. S. Forest Service in forest management research, paid for the work at the rate of 1 cent per tree for the first phase (pruning to 8 feet), and 4 cents per tree for the second phase (8 to 17 feet), making a total of 5 cents per tree. The entire cost for labor, supervision, travel, and marking of trees to be pruned is given in table 1. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.