THINNING THE PEAR. 



329 



heigfht and thickness of. wood than any 

 season before in twenty years. A g"reat 

 many caterpillar's nests showed up early 

 in the season, but vig-orous measures were 

 adopted by nearly all fruit men, so that not 

 many escaped to carry on their work of 

 devastation. The plum tree aphis is in 

 myriads in some localities, and the green 

 apple aphis is very numerous in some places, 

 but where spraying- had been attended to 

 with ibordeax mixture (and T added whale 

 oil soap with it) the trees' are clean and 

 thriftv. 



I am keeping notes from time to time and 

 will have a full report after the crop is 

 harvested. Nearly all our young trees are 

 making vigorous growth. I am giving 9 

 acres of our growing orchard clean cultiva- 

 tion, the balance is in hoe crop, all roots, to 

 see w-hich succeeds the best. I have also 

 tried three kinds of fertilizers, besides wood 

 ashes and barn yard manure, but so far the 

 manure has produced the greatest growth. 



R. L. HUGGARD. 



Whitbv. 



THINNING THE PEAR. 



[r'R. Waite, in writing up Pear Culture, 

 emphasizes the importance of thin- 

 ^fr_^ ning the fruit. We, at Maple- 

 liurst, have never yet satisfied ourselves that 

 this work pays us nearly as well with pears 

 and apples as with peaches, though there 

 is no doubt of very considerable advantage, 

 for otherwise the tree would waste a great 

 deal of strength in maturing useless speci- 

 mens. Mr. Waite writes : 



No discussion of pear culture would be 

 complete without including this important 

 operation, and as it belongs on theoretical 

 grounds with pruning, we may consider it 

 here. It is a great mistake to allow pear 

 trees to overbear. When the fruit is about an 

 inch in diameter the trees should be gone 

 over carefully and all the surplus pears, over 

 and above what the tree can mature properlv, 

 picked off. Each branch should be examin- 

 ed, and, with the size of the mature fruit in 

 mind, the number reduced to the proper 



amount for that size of branch. All imper- 

 fect, wormy or distorted specimens should 

 of course be picked off first, and only those 

 which are expected to make fancy fruit left 

 behind. Unfortunately, no general rule can 

 be given to guide in thinning pears. The 

 rule of one fruit to 6 inches, which common- 

 ly guides the peach grower in thinning 

 peaches, cannot be definitely applied to 

 pears. Experience is the only guide, and 

 the grower may expect to allow a few trees 

 to overbear before he learns the lesson of 

 just how much to thin. Thinning not only 

 improves the quality of the fruit of the 

 current season, but it places the tree in 

 better shape to bear the next year. As a 

 rule, greater profits are secured by regular 

 annual crops than by heavy crops during 

 occasional years, for it commonly happens 

 that such seasons are the very ones when 

 fruit is plentiful and cheap and the profit in 

 handling: it verv small. 



The Fruit Inspection Act will not, it 

 seems, remain a dead letter, for Mr. W^. A. 

 McKinnon, formerly of Grimsby Ont. , 

 now of the Department of Agriculture, 

 Ottawa, has been entrusted with its enforce- 

 ment. He is now proposing plans to be 



submitted to the Minister of Agriculture for 

 approval. It is probable that inspectors 

 will be appointed at all the important fruit 

 centres, as well as travelling inspectors. It is 

 hoped that this will put an end to the fraud- 

 ulent packing of apples, peaches and pears. 



