HARVESTING THE CROP 233 



from each spur. Then gradually increase the distance as con- 

 lidence and courage increase. With peaches and plums a good 

 rule to begin on is to thin until no two fruits touch each other. 

 Of course this really means that the fruit will average a fair dis- 

 tance apart and this can be increased as suggested for apples. 

 The main thing is to get the practice introduced. A great ad- 

 vantage of both these standards of thinning (taking off all but 

 one apple per spur, and thinning plums and peaches so that they 

 do not touch), is that they are simple rules which anybody can 

 follow without any particular thought or slackening of speed. 

 Tell a man to thin to eight inches apart and he spends too much 

 time figuring Avhether two particular apples are seven inches or 

 eight inches apart. 



The Cost. — -What discourages many from thinning is the 

 notion that it is an endless job and that the cost is very high. 

 Of course it does cost, but one should reflect that it costs little 

 more to pick an apple by thinning in July, than it does to 

 pick it by harvesting it in October. The writer kept care- 

 ful account of the cost of thinning an orchard of fifty-three 

 bearing Baldwin trees one season. They were gone over twice, 

 once the fore part of July and a second time the fore part of 

 August, and the total cost was about forty cents per tree. It 

 was the orchard shown in Figure 106, and the trees would 

 average about four barrels per tree, which made the cost of 

 thinning about ten cents per barrel. As no check trees were 

 left without thinning, it is impossible to say how much the fniit 

 was increased in value, but it was certainly a beautiful crop 

 and an apple buyer offered foi- it what he claimed was a dollar 

 a barrel more than he was paying for most fruit, because of their 

 uniformity and size. This would make the profit due to thinning 

 one thousand per cent. 



HARVESTING THE CROP 



Coming now to real picking, several questions of importance 

 present themselves: First, equipment needed for picking; second, 

 when fruit should be picked ; third, how it should be picked. 



