Tenth Annual Meeting 159 



is so here in Connecticut that you do not need anything of 

 that kind, but if your soil is light put it on. Perhaps you will 

 not need it for the first two or three years. Perhaps your 

 trees are growing well enough, but after you have had a crop 

 or two, in my opinion, it will not hurt your trees a bit. I 

 have heard men say that they doubted the wisdom of it, but 

 in my experience it is a good thing to give the ground a good 

 casting over. Of course, you can overdo the matter. I don't 

 say to do it every year. If the trees look thrifty and are doing 

 well, let them rest a year. Skip a year and don't put it on. 



Another thing, if you have got some bright crimson clover in 

 your orchard to turn under it is a good thing. If you can carry 

 it through that is a marvelous crop for it. I had a twelve-year- 

 old peach orchard, and I plowed under a crop of crimson clover 

 with splendid results. If you cannot get that, plant cow-peas. 

 These scientific fellows tell us that that crop is not a perfect 

 fertilizer. I do not suppose it is from their standpoint, but I 

 simply know, gentlemen, it gets there, and that is all I care 

 about it. 



Then in regard to thinning the fruit. That is a matter that 

 we must wake up to. What we did on my place this last 

 summer in that line was the best three weeks' work in the whole 

 year. We do not thin enough. I take off from four to five 

 hundred sometimes. On one tree I took off about twice that 

 and I know I left more than that on. The result was that I 

 had a pretty fair crop of good -sized Iruit, and I believe I would 

 have had a still better result if I had taken off half as many 

 more. A neighbor of mine that has an orchard right across the 

 way didn't thin so much. I shipped all of mine, and he didn't 

 ship more than one basket out of five possibly. The Japan 

 plums want thinning still more than the other kinds. Apples 

 need it, and pears want it. We have to get there. As Mr. 

 Hale says, the best is what the market wants, and that is what 

 we have to grow. There is no use in allowing your trees to 

 produce a lot of small unmarketable fruit if you can help it, and 

 you can help it a lot by proper thinning. Now in regard to 

 thinning the plums, I can't afford to spend the time to get up 

 and pick them ofi. I get up in the tree at the proper stage in 

 the size of the fruit and give it a little shake. With a little 



