294 



THE CANADIAN HORTICULTURIST. 



orchard a hayfield. After cultivating a year 

 or two, it will be necessary to thin out the 

 fruit. 



"You cannot have good fruit without 

 thinning. If a young tree attempts to bear 

 ten apples, pick off eight and leave only two 

 to come to perfection, and you will have two 

 fine specimens. The talk of an " off year " 

 is nonsense. There should be no "off year." 

 When the climatic conditions are such that 

 the crop is ruined, the next year the trees 

 will be so full that the fruit cannot ripen and 

 at the same time form buds for the following 

 year. By thinning off 75 to 80 per cent, 

 every year you can bring the tree into the 

 habit of annual bearing. Watch your trees 

 closely and as soon as the apples are ripe 

 pick them, even if it be August or Septem- 

 ber. Pack them at once in the barrels or 

 boxes in which they are to be shipped, and 

 place where there will be a good, even tem- 

 perature. Grade according to size and pack 

 honestly from top to bottom." 



Gillett's Lye has been used at Maple- 

 hurst on rose bushes, both for aphis and 

 rose hopper with marked benefit. We used 

 one ten cent package to five gallons of 

 water, which, in a few cases slightly burned 

 the foliage, but wholly routed the enemy. 

 We also used it with success to destroy the 

 aphis on the cherry trees, applying it with 

 Mitchell's atomizer, but it injured the foliage 

 considerably. 



Kerosene is also used for destroying the 

 insects above mentioned. The 10 per cent, 

 solution is the proper strength in summer, 

 made in the proportion of one gallon kero- 

 sene to ten gallons of water. 



Whale Oil Soap used in the summer 

 time where the foliage is out, should be 

 used at the rate of one pound to five or more 

 gallons of water. This will destroy the 

 young of the San Jose Scale and Aphis. 



Irrigation in fruit growing is the title of 

 Bulletin No. 116, U. S. Department of 

 Horticulture. After showing that the trees 

 of the Citrus family require more water than 

 our deciduous trees, he attributes three evils 

 to insufficiency of moisture, viz. : Poor 

 growth, poor fruit and intermittent bearing. 

 Summer irrigation before fruit ripening of 

 three acre-inches per acre after the early 

 ripening fruits have reached good size and 

 just before they begin the final swell, is 

 claimed to reach the circulation of the tree 

 in time to materially aid in the attainment 

 of satisfactory size. More than this it also 

 helps the tree to hold its foliage and growth 

 the balance of the season. A large portion 

 of the bulletin is taken up in explaining the 

 various methods of utilizing irrigation water 

 which we cannot enter upon here ; for these 

 details we refer our readers to the bulletin 

 referred to. 



Fertilizing Self-Sterile Grapes is the 

 title of Bulletin No. 169, by Prof. S. A. 

 Beach, Geneva, N. Y. , who has for several 

 seasons been testing the self fertility of the 

 grape. Many of our cultivated American 

 grapes will not produce perfect bunches 

 unless cross pollinated by some more fertile 

 variety, and Mr. Beach has been seeking to 

 find out the best varieties to use for this 

 purpose. Detailed statements of the results 

 are given with quite a number of varieties 

 upon which experiments were made, and of 

 these we give the instance of the Brighton, 

 a self-sterile variety, fertilized by different 

 varieties, the first five more or less self- 

 sterile also, and the others more or less self- 

 fertile. The illustration speaks so fully for 

 itself that nothing more is necessary to prove 

 the necessity of planting self-fertile varieties 

 in our vineyards instead of large acreages of 

 one variety, and in any degree of a self- 

 sterile kind, such as Lindley, Salem, Barry, 

 Merrimac, etc. 



