.'iSO 



Report of the Houticulturist of ihe 



First. All wormy, knotty or otherwise inferior fruit is removed 

 and all clusters thinned to one fruit. 



Second. Same as first, and in addition, the rest of the fruit is 

 thinned so that none of it is less than four inches apart. 



Third. Same as first, and in addition the rest of the fruit is 

 thinned so that none of it is loss than six inches apart. 



The Ihinniiig was done from June 25 to June 27, 'the largest 

 apples at that time being about an inch and a half in diameter. 

 The results of the first season's work are set forth below. 



First Method. Two Baldwin trees, heavily loaded with fruit, 

 were selected for this test. The fruit on one tree was thinned 

 by taking off all knotty, wormy or otherwise inferior fruit, and 

 all clusters were thinned to one fruit. It took four houi-s to 

 do the thinning and four for picking, making altogether eight 

 hours. It took five hours to pick the tree that was not thinned. 

 The marketable fruit graded as follows: 



FiR^T Method — Yield per Trek. 



Thinned 



Not thinneil. 



Per cent. No. 1. 



70.3 

 60.5 



Per cent. No. 2. 



29.7 

 39 5 



Total bushels 

 marketable. 



27.75 

 32.25 



From this we see that while the tree which had its fruit 

 thinned gave IG per cent, less fruit than the unthinned tree, 

 10 per cent, more of it ranked No. 1, so that it really yielded as 

 many bushels of No. 1 fruit as did the unthinned tree, without 

 carrying so heavy a burden of inferior fruit. There were about 

 three times as many culls where the fruit was not thinned as 

 there were where it was thinned. The thinned fruit was higher 

 colored and more attractive in appearance than that from the 

 trees which were not thinned. 



^Ineh better results followed the second method, as will now be 

 shown. 



