TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL MEETING. 



139 



times tliink that he is getting them thinned pretty close, or 

 that he is cutting- out too many, and will think he is not go- 

 ing to have any crop. He does not stop to think that he 

 should g"o further and thin his orchard. Even then 

 the trees will sometimes look, wihen the fruit comes 

 to ripen, as though they had not been thinned. I will 

 tell you one experience I had myself with thinning. I 

 had two trees. I took seven thousand apples off from one 

 of them, and eight off the other, and at picking time we took 

 sixteen boxes off one and eighteen the other,^ — all first class 

 fruit. Of course, those were old trees. Tliose trees were fif- 

 teen or sixteen years old. 



A ?\Iember: You spoke of a second thinning soon af- 

 ter the first. 



AIr. Castxer : Yes sir. That is all done to catch 

 what imperfect fruit you missed the first time. At the sec- 

 ond thinning they have grown larger, and you can see what 

 }ou ought to take out better. 



A Member : How do you get your standard for the 

 different grades? How do the different packers know? 



Mr. Castner: No one is allowed to pack until they 

 have been instructed. They are all instructed in the pack- 

 ers' school and they know how each box should be put up, 

 and they know the different grades, and how they should 

 be packed. So, by doing that, we can send out packers all 

 over the valley, and they will all pack just the same. That 

 fruit will all run pretty nearly uniform when it gets into 

 New York or into your other eastern cities where we send it. 



A Member: The growers don't pack their own fruit? 



]\'Ir. Castner : A few do, but there is not very nuich 

 of those goods shipped out of the state. Most of the grow- 

 ers prefer to have their crops packed by expert packers. The 

 only way to learn the orchard business is to go at it and 

 find out for yourself. These stories that you read in the 

 newspapers about the Hood River apple district do not 

 amount to much. 



