79 



MR. FROST : I would like the President to answer that, 

 too. 



TI-IE PRESIDENT: We have had some experience iu 

 thinning and I want to endorse most enthusiastically ^Ir. 

 Smith's statement that it is something we ought to do more 

 of. The rule we have always laid down is, in thinning ap- 

 ples, to take off all. the apples from each cluster except a 

 single apple. We find that is a rule that is a good deal 

 easier for the men or boys who are doing the work, to keep 

 in mind, much easier than telling them to thin to about eight 

 inches apart, because then they spend a lot of time wonder- 

 ing whether it is Ty^ or 8 inches. But if they see one apple 

 on a spur, it is an easy thing to follow that out on the others 

 and keep it in mind, and you would be surprised, when you 

 get through, to see how equally that is distributed over the 

 trees. The great difficulty is to get enough off. You might 

 think that a man who didn 't have any interest in the orchard 

 itself except working in it, w^ould be perfectly willing to 

 take off all you wanted him to b}' hand, but they won't take 

 oft' enough in most instances, and when they get through 

 with the thinning you are always sure that they will think, 

 at first, that they have taken oft' too much. Even a man who 

 has been through the mill looks at his trees and wonders if 

 they aren't too thin, if they have not too few apples on the 

 trees and too many on the ground. But I believe there is no 

 operation connected with orcharding at the present time that 

 we ought to push more than we do thinning, nothing that 

 will help the orchard industry any more. I don't inean to 

 say it is more important than spraying, but most of us are 

 interested in spraying, and are doing it, but scarcel}^ any 

 one is thinning his fruit. On peaches our rule is that they 

 should be thinned so that no two will touch. That is a sim- 

 ple rule and easily kept in mind, and yet when they get 

 through they are pretty well thinned. 



Now, as to the question that ]\Ir, Morse asked, there isn 't 

 any question that it costs a little more to break that up into 

 two operations, but we have kept very careful accounts on 



