310 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 



growers. As a writer has said, a man 

 can make $10 a day tliinning liis fruit. 

 Ernest Walker. 



FayettevilU'. Ark. 



Spraying Results iu >"eeds for Thinning 



A new problem promptly presents itself 

 along with the first results of thorough 

 work in spraying — overloading of the 

 trees with fruit. The trees set and per- 

 sistently retain, oftentimes, twice, thrice 

 or four times the number of apples that 

 they can mature. Where these conditions 

 occur there is no work that will pay bet- 

 ter returns than carefully thinning the 

 fruit. A surplus apple or a defective ap- 

 ple should be considered as a "weed ap- 

 ple," as it will not only be worthless it- 

 self, but will prevent the fullest devel- 

 opment of the perfect apples which it 

 crowds. It is an excellent plan to relieve 

 overloaded trees by removing the defec- 

 tive apples and thinning those remaining 

 until they hang from six to eight inches 

 apart. The total quantity in bushels, at 

 picking time, will not be appreciably les- 

 sened, because individual specimens of 

 the smaller number of apples will attain 

 much larger size. 



In addition to the profitable results 

 of thinning, so far as the size and quality 

 of the fruit is concerned, the effect is very 

 beneficial to the trees in various ways, as- 

 sisting them materially in retaining 

 health and vigor and promoting in a 

 greater or lesser degree a regularity of 

 crop production. 



F. H. B.\i.Loi'. 

 Wooster. Ohio. 



>vil| It Vayl 



Most mature apple trees have a tend- 

 ency to overbear and during recent years 

 it has been demonstrated that it pays to 

 remove a half or two-thirds of the apples 

 on all heavily loaded trees. Surplus ap- 

 ples may be regarded as weeds. They 

 are of not much value in themselves and 

 restrict the growth of others. Thinning 

 does not necessarily reduce the yield, but 

 on the contrary greatly increases the 

 yield of first-grade fruit. Besides that 

 of improving the size and quality of the 

 fruit there are several reasons why a tree 

 should be thinned. There is a great drain 



Fig. 1. A .Small Branch Bearins Ten Apples. 

 This number should bo reduced by half, leav- 

 ing the apples spaced somewhat as shown in 

 the figure to tlae right. The same branch 

 after live apples have been removed. These 

 apples were allowed to become too large be- 

 fore thinning. 



on the vitality of a tree in the maturing 

 of so many individuals. Each apple has 

 its supply of seeds, and these form the 

 most concentrated part of the fruit. By 

 removing one-half of the apples we relieve 

 the tree of the necessity of maturing half 

 the seeds and in doing so we do not re- 

 duce the crop of fruit. By relieving the 

 strain upon a tree during the growing 

 season, the fruit buds for the following 

 year are likely to be better developed, 

 and it is believed also that thinning tends 

 to encourage the annual bearing habit. 

 Thinning lessens the loss from the break- 

 ing of limbs and gives the grower an op- 

 portunity to destroy insect-infected fruit 

 and thus reduce the number of insects 

 for the following season. 



The common objection to thinning is 

 the time it takes. There is no weight to 

 such an argument for there is only a cer- 

 tain number of apples to be picked and 



