No. 6. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 613 



Don't let a tree over bear, but thin it well — well as you think, and 

 then do it over again. Thorough thinning of the fruit is essential. 

 When the fruit begins to ripen, pick it. Take apples. Winter ap- 

 ples want at least four pickings over. The old way was to wait until 

 the early ones fall on the ground. The average winter apple tree 

 wants picking over at least four times over a period of practically a 

 month. With me it takes a month to get apples off any one apple 

 tree. Pick them as they mature. The same way with the peach. 

 When there is a dozen, fifteen or twenty, come to maturity harvest 

 them. In a week or ten days later, there are two or three hundred 

 apples to nice maturity, and then a little later, 80 per cent, of the 

 crop is mature. Get that, but leave all the green ones on the under 

 side, and sometimes six weeks from the original picking, you will get 

 a bushel or two that would have been green, if picked in the ordi- 

 nary way. So the picking of fruit as it matures, and the careful 

 handling of it, and the proper, honest grading of it into proper sizes, 

 the packing of it in the best packages you can get, the most attractive 

 packages, honestly packed from top to bottom,— if you have any 

 poor specimens, put them on the top; then stand there and say, 

 '•'There is the poorest in that package." Sell it on that as a basis. 

 Stand for your price; let your commission man stand for price, be- 

 cause you guarantee it all the way down through, and make the 

 public pay for that guarantee. They are willing and Sflad to do it. 

 They have been humbugged too long with a few good ones on top 

 and inferior ones on the bottom. Don't have any poor ones in the 

 package if you can held it. 



ASPARAGUS CULTURE 



By PROF. R. L. WATTS, Professor of Horticulture, State College, Pa. 



I think you might call this a succotash session. We had peaches 

 and cream this morning, and apple pie and dumplings, and so ^n 

 we have had all along the road. This afternoon we will have aspara- 

 gus and cabbage. There is one very comforting thing about the 

 vegetable industry. Mr. Hale said this morning that the apple 

 industry would be over done. I heard him say at a meeting recently, 

 beginning in five years and extending fifteen years more, there will 

 be no money made in apples. That is very comforting to the man 

 who has a young orchard just coming on. It is something for him 

 to think about in the night when he is a little sleepless. The market 

 gardener has the advantage over the fruit grower in this respect. 

 The market gardener can switch around from one crop to another. 



Now, seriously, the market gardener in Pennsylvania has not 

 given the attention that the importance of the subject demands. I 

 am certain when the census report is completed and you see copies, 

 you will find out that the market gardeijer ioterest of Pennsylvania 



