258 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



once or twice successively and used with the same strength a half 

 dozen times in succession there is danger of injury from the left-over 

 accumulative ollect and in order to avoid this the second spraying we 

 omit ihe lime-suli)hur. 1 spent hull' au hour yesterday looking through 

 our plum orchard and did not find a single plum showing the curculio 

 mark. This year we have only sprayed three times. We had a full 

 set of plums and no signs of curculio and if a few should appear we 

 have plent.y of fruit left. About the time the plums color we repeat 

 this process, using the same mixture and about the same number of 

 applications. The great bugaboo in i)lum culture has been the cur- 

 culio and rot. Last year we had practically no rot. I told my son 

 to count carefully all the plums that showed it. lie packed S3 bushels 

 one day and reported he found three plums in the day's picking had 

 any indications whatever. You know what that means. 



Let me give you another lesson we learned last year, in regard to 

 thinning. We make a practice of thinning all our fruit and last year 

 after thinning the peaches we went into the plum orchard, thinning 

 all the orchard excepting the south half of two rows, then cherry pick- 

 ing came on and vre did not get back to the plums for five or six weeks 

 when the rest of them were thinned. At picking time we found those 

 that were thinned early were easily fift^' to seventy-five per cent, 

 larger than those thinned later, and when blooming time came this 

 spring where we did not expect fruit we found that the entire orchard 

 was full of bloom and set plenty of fruit except those two half rows 

 that were thinned late. They had nothing Avhile the other end, the 

 same variety, thinned earlier, had plenty of bloom and set a heavy 

 crop of fruit. 



Probably I might just as well speak of thinning here as later. I 

 think Mr. Tyson spoke of the advantage. I know the larger grower of 

 fruit will say it is impractical but it is not, it is much better to do it 

 early. The time to remove and pick off part of that fruit is from June 

 to July. Some thin up to October. Suppose you have a tree with 

 10,000 apples on and it should not have over 5,000, which is the easier 

 and better? to pick 5,000 of the small ones of early and then in the 

 fall jjick off 5,000 good first class apples that will bring good prices 

 and please the customer; or to leave them all on and have them all of 

 an inferior size and quality to pick off in the fall if they hav^e not 

 broken the tree or prematurely fallen. Thinning makes less work in 

 the whole and is more profitable. I spoke of 10.000. I wonder if you 

 ever counted the number of a])ples on a tree? Last year when the 

 thinning test was being made they counted the apples taken from (me 

 Grimes Golden 28 years old. They remoA^ed at least 5,000 and still 

 left too many on for a good big crop; another tree they removed 6,500 

 from. 



Just a few words in regard to the marketing and j)icking and I will 

 leave the rest of the time for questions and discussion, for I believe 

 that is the most valuable part of the meeting. We can only under- 

 take in these scattering remarks to hit the mountains, but when you 

 ask the questions I know the information you are after and I may be 

 able to give some. I was glad to listen to Mr. Tyson's remarks in re- 

 gard to handling fruit. I believe more people fail in gathering and 

 marketing them in growing and esx)ecial]y is this true with those 

 whose education is largely as farmers. It does not require much skill 



