The Canadian Horticulturist. 



PEACHES: THINNING AND PACKING. 



^=^HE peach industry is an important one in many parts of our 

 Province, especially when the yellows does not exist. Peach 

 growers will be interested in reading Bulletin 74 of the Cornell 

 Experiment Station We quote here that portion referring to 

 thinning and packing, two important features, the one for pro- 

 ducing fine large samples, and the other for placing them before 

 buyers in the most attractive manner. 



Thinning the fruit. — There is almost universal neglect in thinning the 

 fruit in this State. Every peach grower knows that good fruit cannot be grown 

 upon overloaded trees, and yet he refuses to thin and forthwith blames the 

 market ! It should be a rule that no two peaches should stand closer together 

 than five inches of one another. No work of the orchard pays better than this 

 thinning of the fruit, either in the price which the remaining produce brings in 

 the market, or in the vital energy which is saved to the tree. Peach trees 

 which are regularly thinned should bear every year, barring injuries from winter 

 or spring frosts. Growers seem to forget that this fruit must all be picked 

 sooner or later, and that the work is more easily done in June or July than in 

 September. The thinning should be delayed until the fruit is the size of the 

 end of one's thumb, for by this time the " June drop " has occurred, and the 

 peaches can be readily seen and handled. 





NewYorl^'TKeM^rl^eT b 



> !aro?r&. 



Fio. 710. 



Marketing the fruit. — But if growers are negligent in thinning the fruit, 

 they are too often positively careless in marketing it. Even in this year of low 

 prices, fancily or nicely packed fruit has brought good prices, wholly inde- 

 pendent of its quality. The handsome boxes of California peaches, containing 

 60 wrapped fruits, have sold from $2.00 to $4.00, and yet they are generally 

 very inferior in quality when they reach our markets, .\longside these peaches. 



