CHAPTER X. 



THINNING, GATHERING, KEEPING, AND MARKETING. 



THINNING. 



NEXT to good cultivation, nothing contributes more to bring 

 out the excellent qualities of fruit, and to give it size and a hand- 

 some appearance, than thinning the young fruit on the tree. If 

 crowded, it is small and often comparatively flavorless. Over- 

 bearing always injures the growth of the tree, yet thinning the fruit 

 is scarcely ever practised. The farmer who takes care not to have 

 more than four stalks of corn in a hill, and who would consider it 

 folly to have twenty, never thins any of the twenty peaches on a 

 small shoot. The gardener who would allow twenty cucumber vines 

 in a hill, would be called an ignoramus by his neighbor, who at the 

 same time suffers a dwarf pear to bear five times as many specimens 

 as it could profitably mature. 



E. Moody, of Lockport, a successful fruit-marketer, stated before 

 the Fruit-Growers' Society at Rochester, that he had found great 

 profit in thinning the fruit on his peach-trees ; that while he had 

 much fewer specimens in consequence of thinning, he had about as 

 many bushels ; the larger peaches could be picked in far less time, 

 and while his fine crop sold readily at a dollar and a half per basket, 

 his neighbor who did not practise thinning, found it difficult to sell 

 his for thirty-seven or fifty cents. 



President Wilder said, in an address before the American Porno- 

 logical Society : " One of the best cultivators in the vicinity of 

 Boston has reduced this theory to practice, with the happiest effect, 

 in the cultivation of the pear. He produces every year superior 

 fruit, which commands the highest price. Some have doubted 

 whether this practice can be made remunerative, except in its appli- 

 cation to the finer fruits. But another cultivator, who raises an 

 annual crop of the best apples, assures us that the secret of his 

 success is the thinning of the fruit, and he has no doubt of the eco- 

 nomy of the practice." 



Apples and pears, when half grown, will show any defects of 



