WEST MICHIGAN FRUIT GROWERS' SOCIETY. 109 



picking off the poorest. In this way you may get large and extra fine fruit, 

 but otherwise the amount of good fruit will be small. 



A. S. Dyckman : I once started out to thin an apple tree. I timed myself 

 for one hour and found it would take me three days to thin one tree. 1 gave 

 it up as a profitless job. 



Mr. Merritt: If I could prune that tree three seasons I could then thin it 

 in half an hour. It is early enough to begin thinning apples now. 



H. Dale Adams: The diflticulty lies in the expense of picking over large 

 orchards. Something, perhaps trimming, must be substituted. 



Mr. Monroe asked Ilenry Chatfield to tell how he gets such fine apples as 

 he has every fall, and he said: I always keep pigs in my orchard and they 

 eat the fallen fruit. Last year I thinned some by pruning and hand picking, 

 but not enough. I would thin Spies and some choice kinds by hand. I 

 fertilize my apple orchard and get a crop each year. 



Clark Sheffer : Last year I thinned the fruit on one of a row of Snow apples 

 and had very fine fruit. I had heard that by thinning we can get a crop of 

 apples each year; but that tree this year has no fruit and the others hang full. 

 I once knew a man who thinned apples by taking a long club and knocking 

 off fruit and twigs. 



Mr. Merritt : That doubtless is a very effective way of thinning, but I would 

 turn my back upon an orchard and never see it again before I would attack 

 it with a club. 



S. Sheffer : But I knew a man who did that very thing and got good fruit. 



3. Can any other course be successfully followed for destruction of curculio 

 than jarring the trees, and if so, what? 



A. S. Dyckman : Until a few days ago I believed there was no other rem- 

 edy than jarring. I thought the talk about carbolic acid to be nonsense. 

 But I went then to the orchards of J. N. Stearns, near this town, and I 

 must own to complete relief from my skepticism. On his peaches I could 

 not find a single curculio mark, and only a few on one kind of plums ; but 

 the Lombards were wholly free and were loaded full of fruit. 



H. G. Buck: I have tried to raise plums but always found the curculio too 

 thick for all the jarring. Last year f sprayed my trees with London purple 

 and got a full crop. 



James Gardiner: This season I sprayed my plum trees with Paris green 

 three times, in the evening, and have promise of an abundant crop of plums. 

 I used a teaspoonful in a pail of water but this same solution hurt my peach 

 trees. 



CUT-WORMS ON GRAPES— RUST — CHOICE OF GRAPES — PACKAGES. 



4. The cut-worm and the grape. 



President Phillips : I have on a former occasion spoken of my experience in 

 destroying the cut-worm, or preventing its ravages among the grape vines, 

 and various reasons for freedom from damage were advanced, besides my own ; 

 but I know what the fact is, and whatever theory may be advanced is imma- 

 terial. If in June or July you sow your vineyard to buckwheat and plow it 

 under when in full bloom, I will guarantee that not a bud will be hurt the 

 next season. I learned of this through the remarks of a French delegate to 

 one of our national pomological meetings. He said there was some principle 

 in the buckwheat flower fatal to the life of all larvae. This will protect 

 equally well both old and young vineyards. 



