New York Agricultural Experiment Station. 295 



provement in the grade may be expected from thinning to six inches 

 than to four inches apart. 



Does it pay to thin apples? The reply of Mr. Wilson, a practical 

 fruit grower in whose orchard these tests were made, is in effect that 

 where there is a general crop of apples, the set full, the chance for 

 small apples great and widespread, it would pay to thin enough to 

 insure good sized fruit; otherwise not, except to protect the tree. 



Methods of removing the fruit. No way of jarring or raking off 

 the fruit is advised in thinning apples, since by these methods all 

 grades are removed indiscriminately. Hand work is best. It permits 

 selection of superior, and rejection of all inferior, specimens. 



Time to thin. The experiments in thinning apples and other fruits 

 lead to the opinion that early thinning gives best results. Begin with 

 apples within three or four weeks after the fruit sets even if the June 

 drop is not yet completed. 



Cost of thinned as compared with iinthinned apples. The cost of 

 thinning mature trees which are well loaded should not exceed fifty 

 cents per tree and probably would average less than that. Although 

 a given number of fruits can be thinned faster than an equal num- 

 ber can be picked when ripe, it has required about as much time to 

 thin a tree as it has to harvest the ripe fruit. Thinned apples can 

 be graded more rapidly than an equal amount of unthinned apples. 

 Thinned apples can be handled more economically than unthinned 

 apples because they have proportionately less of those grades which 

 form the least profitable part of the crop, namely, the No. 2's, the 

 drops and the culls. 



