126 FRUIT-GROWING 



other words the small and imperfect fruit must 

 be picked some time so why not get it off the 

 tree and out of the way as early as possible? 

 In that way we give the perfect apples a better 

 chance to show what they can do. 



Sometimes this thinning appears to be a 

 pretty severe operation ; looking at the discard- 

 ed fruit under a thinned tree might lead one to 

 suspect that too much had been taken off. One 

 of the girls we had working in the orchard last 

 fall remarked that she had twice "picked all 

 the apples" off a certain tree and still it was 

 laden at harvest time. That was the way it 

 appeared to her when she was thinning the 

 fruit in July and again in August. If thinning 

 had not been done on that particular tree the 

 fruit would have been smaller in size and more 

 of it would have been imperfect. The small and 

 imperfect fruit would all have gone through the 

 packing shed, all would have been handled just 

 as much as the good apples were — and it costs 

 money to handle fruit. So thinning accom- 

 plishes really more than it seems. While it 

 appears at first glance to be only a means of 

 securing larger apples, it in fact does more 

 than that because it simplifies the work of 

 harvesting and of grading. 



While apple picking requires a tremendous 

 amount of work and long hours of labor, it is 

 really the time that the grower lives for. Oc- 



