THINNING * 27 



season's growth the plants may be strong enongh to 

 be set in the open gronncl, bnt they need mellow, 

 well -prepared soil and carefnl attention, for most of 

 them will still be small and weak. Growing plants 

 from seeds is a slow process, and in the majority of 

 cases the offspring will show nothing snperior to the 

 parent or to other varieties already in cultivation. 



THINNING THE FRUIT 



Thinning is often advantageous with the larger 

 fruits, and is easily done with berries by clipping off 

 a part of each cluster or some clusters entirely. A 

 limited experiment to test the value of such practice 

 did not give encouraging results with either raspber- 

 ries or blackberries. The eye could detect no increase 

 in the size of the berries on thinned plants, and, since 

 the principal gain would be in the increased size and 

 attractiveness of the fruit, it seemed to fail of its 

 purpose. 



As a matter of fact, the thinning is done at the 

 annual spring pruning, and if the proper balance has 

 been obtained then, there is no need of further reduc- 

 ing the number of fruits. 



It is generally supposed that rainy and cloudy 

 weather at blossoming time is injurious to the fruit 

 crop, and the question occurs whether frequent spray- 

 ing with water at this period would produce any no- 



*rred W. Card, Bull, 57, Cornell Exp, Statioa. 



