THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. ^:^ 



THINNING DECIDUOUS FRUITS. ^''' 



Address, State Fruit Growers' Convention, San Jose, Cal., December 2-4, 1913. 

 By Geo. P. Weldon, Chief Deputy State Commissioner of Horticulture. 



Probably nowhere has the science of fruit growing reached greater 

 perfection than in California. We take much pride in our orchards 

 and well we may, for we believe that there are no better to be found 

 anywhere. The craving for gold of the immigrants of forty-nine is 

 sati.sfied in our day by the bounteoiTS crops of luscious fruit. Nature 

 has done her part toward making soil, moisture and climatic conditions 

 favorable to the development of practically all the good fruits that are 

 grown. In fact, she has done so much for us that I wonder sometimes 

 if we have not become too dependent upon her. We plant the trees and 

 they grow with little or no care; they produce crops without careful 

 nursing, and the orchardist harvests, but is it always the best fruit that 

 his particular trees are capable of producing that he gets? As the 

 years go by more and more attention is being given to our orchards. 

 Necessity has forced upon us certain practices that were not indulged in 

 by our predecessors of a few years ago. Competition has become so 

 keen that only the man whose fruit is first-class can hope to make a 

 success of his business, for orcharding is truly a business requiring just 

 as shrewd a knowledge of good business methods as the grocery, dry 

 goods, or hardware l)usiness. Each one requires a certain outlay of 

 capital and the man who knows his business well enough so that he can 

 see where a dollar spent will bring liim two dollars in return is the man 

 who is sure to succeed. The desire to get rich quick has not always been 

 conducive to the best business sense in fruit growing, for it has 

 prompted men to spend all their efforts toward making their trees 

 produce the heaviest possible crops. While there is no denying the fact 

 that such a practice has made many rich in the past we have reached a 

 period in our history where we can not afford to sacrifice quality for 

 quantity. We may harvest twenty-five boxes of pears or apples from a 

 tree and get very little for them because of their inferior size and 

 quality when half as many of good size and good quality will bring a 

 handsome profit. 



Thinning. 



One important operation in connection with the handling of our 

 immature crop, viz, thinning, is too often neglected. The excuse so 

 often given for not thinning is that it costs too much. This is a case, 

 however, where a little extra money invested will add greatly to the 

 income of an orchard whether peaches, pears, apples, apricots, and I 

 am tempted to say, prunes, plums or cherries are grown. There are 

 records of a number of experiments that have been carried out which 

 prove conclusively that thinning pays, and some of these will be cited 

 later. 



