HARVESTING AND MARKETING 125 



There is no time of the year when it is so im- 

 portant to have an abundance of help in the 

 orchard as at the harvest. All other orchard 

 work can be handled with a comparatively small 

 force, but at picking time one must have an 

 abundance of labor for the work is there to be 

 done and it will not wait. 



Perhaps one of the most useful practices 

 that has been introduced in many years is that 

 of thinning the fruit. I expect that this has 

 done more to increase the quality of our apples 

 than any other one thing except the introduc- 

 tion of spraying. In some cases spraying was 

 what made thinning necessary because with- 

 out it there were not enough apples to thin — 

 or in some cases to pick. Many growers who 

 have never tried it are unable to see in just what 

 way thinning will be of any help to them. They 

 protest that they have worked hard to get the 

 fruit on the trees — why pick it off and throw 

 it away? The answer is that on a thinned tree 

 we will have just as many pounds of fruit as 

 we would have on the same tree if it were not 

 thinned and all of the crop will be of a market- 

 able size. The apples will all average more 

 uniform in size and shape and be freer from 

 any fungous injury. If the small defective ap- 

 ples and those which are perfect but too numer- 

 ous, are allowed to hang on the tree until 

 picking time all will have to be gathered. In 



