CHAPTER IX. 



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 handsome appearance, than thinning the young fruit on 

 the tree. If crowded, it is small and often comparatively 

 flavorless. Overbearing 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. 



All successful fruit-growers now expect to thin peaches, 

 plums, apricots, and dwarf pears; and some of them thin 

 standard pears and apples. Thinning may be accomplished 

 by pruning, and by picking part of the fruit. Knowing where 

 the fruit-spurs' or fruit-buds are, the pruner can so reduce 

 them as to lessen the amount of prospective fruit. Thus, the 

 heading back of peaches and the removal of the inferior twigs 

 in the middle of the tree, lessen the number of fruit-buds. On 

 peaches and apricots, however, the operator must be careful 

 not to reduce the buds too much by means of pruning, for he 

 must allow of some loss from spring frosts, curculio, and other 

 contingencies. 



Thinning the fruit by picking it off is usually performed as 

 soon as the " June drop " is passed. This " June drop " takes 

 off the little fruits which chance not to be fertilized, and 



