74 HOME FRUIT GROWER 



Grafting wax may be purchased at nurseries and seed stores. 

 People who like to do messing can easily make their own. A good 

 wax is made by slowly melting four pounds of resin in an old but 

 clean pot over a gentle fire, adding two pounds of beeswax and one 

 pound of tallow, stirring till thoroughly mixed and then pouring in a 

 tub of cold water and when cool enough to handle pulling and kneading 

 it till it looks like molasses taffy. For convenience it may then be 

 made into balls or sticks. It will keep indefinitely. Grease will 

 prevent its sticking to the hands. In cold weather it must be slightly 

 warmed to make it work easily. 



THINNING 



With all due credit to pruning, cultivating and spraying, no 

 one operation will so improve the size and appearance of fruit as 

 thinning. This simple operation consists in cutting or plucking off 

 50 to 75 per cent, of the specimens while they are still green and letting 

 them drop upon the ground. Among the reasons why it is so important 

 are the following: 



It maintains tree vigor because the energy which would be wasted 

 in developing cull fruits is directed to the improvement of the better 

 ones allowed to mature, and conserved by having to form a smaller 

 number of seeds the most exhausting process of tree life. These culls 

 consist mainly of misshapen, diseased or insect-injured specimens. 

 Thus thinning tends to make the trees bear with greater annual 

 regularity, to improve size, color and quality of the fruit, to prevent 

 breakage of branches due to overloads. 



The work itself is very simple. Usually it should begin about a 

 month after the petals fall or about two weeks after the trees naturally 

 shed what they apparently consider excess fruits; but far too many 

 fruits still remain as a rule. In order to know when the work is done 

 it is necessary to be systematic, to start at one point and advance 

 from the lower parts of the limbs to the tips and in a circle around the 

 trees. Make the first rule to remove every defective specimen and 

 the second to allow no specimens to remain so close that they will 

 touch when full grown. This latter rule cannot always be applied, 

 for to thin Seckel and other little Pears and many Plums that grow 

 in clusters would be to leave too few fruits. Judgment, however, 

 will grow with experience. Apple and large-sized Pear varieties are 

 often thinned to eight and even ten inches apart by Western growers; 

 Peaches to four or six. Never mind how strewn the ground looks. 

 Probably you'll think you've taken off too many; but after two or three 

 years' experience and observation the improvement in the fruit will 

 prompt you to thin to an even greater extent. 



