CTTAPTEIJ VI. 



INFLUENCE OF SPRAYS ON THE FRUITING OF THE TREES. 

 THINNING TTTE FItUTT OF SPRAYED TUEKS. 



Thocrononil discussion of the spray work conductod in the Kio Ronito 

 orchard will he found in Chapter IV, and it is therefore not necessary 

 to review these matters here. As soon as j>rowth was well startled 

 in this orchard in the sprin*^ of 18!)5, it became evident that the fruit 

 would have to he thinned on a portion of the Lovcll trees comprisinjif 

 the experiment block. The peaches were settiiiij;- thickly on both 

 spra^'ed and unsprayed trees, but as leaf curl developed, the youn^- 

 fruit upon the control trees beo^an to fall, while that upon the sprayed 

 trees remained firmly attached and t»'rew rapidly. 



When the younj*' peaches had reached the size of hickory nuts, and 

 the pits Avere forming-, the danger of dropping from curl had ])assed, 

 and the thinning of fruit on overloaded trees was then undertaken. 

 To enable the writer to make just comparisons of the merits of the 

 various sprays in saving fruit, it became necessary to carefully record 

 the amount and number of peaches thinned from all trees in the experi- 

 ment block. Thinning fruit is an eciualizing process, and to equalize 

 the crop upon sprayed and unsprayed trees or upon trees treated with 

 different sprays, would be to destro}' the contrast in the amount of 

 fruit arising from the use of different formube. This would result in 

 the loss of the very facts which it was hoped to obtain from the experi- 

 ments, unless records of the fruit thinned off' were preserved. For 

 the preservation of such records the following plan was adopted: 

 Canvas sheets of large size, commonly used in the harvest of the almond 

 crop in the same orchard, were spread ])eneath the trees to be thinned. 

 The young peaches were allowed to fall upon the canvas as picked, and 

 the canvas was moved as necessary. The fruit thus thinned was 

 poured from the canvas into picking boxes beneath the tree from which 

 it was thinned. By this plan the fruit thinned from each tree ' was 

 kept by itself. After an experiment row of 10 trees had been thinned, 

 the fruit picked from each tree was separately weighed and the weight 

 recorded. From 3 trees of the row sufficient fruit was now taken to 

 amount to 25 pounds. The peaches in this 25 pounds were then 

 counted, the number entered with the other records of the row, and 

 on this basis the average number of small peaches per pound for the 

 row was determined. By multiplying the number of pounds of young 

 peaches thinned from each tree by the average number of peaches 

 per pound, as above obtained, the writer was able to determine quite 

 accurately the number of peaches thiimed from each tree of the row. 



103 



