140 CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



work for an arbitrary inch-distance on all sorts of shoots, and it 

 will be seen to be just as irrational if it be applied without regard 

 to the other conditions of the tree. If, however, a rule must be 

 had, let it be this, that the distance between the fruit shall be 

 two and one-half times the diameter desired in the fruit. This 

 would fix an arbitrary distance, then, of four to six inches for 

 apricots and six to eight inches for peaches with other fruits 

 according to their respective sizes, and the late varieties with 

 greater distance than early. 



Any such standard, however, considers only the size of the 

 fruit, not the strength of the tree, and therefore stops short of 

 one of the important ends of thinning, to conserve the strength 

 of the tree for next season's fruiting. Fruits might be thus spaced 

 and still the tree be overladen, because it may be carrying 

 too many bearing shoots. Calculate the burden of the tree in 

 this way, for instance : Peaches which weigh three to the pound 

 are of fair marketable size ; sixty such peaches will fill an ordinary 

 peach-box of twenty pounds; ten to twelve such boxes is fruit 

 enough for a good bearing tree six to ten years of age. Now count 

 the little peaches you have left on one main branch and its laterals, 

 which ought to be about one-tenth of the tree, and thin down to 

 about sixty. By doing a few trees in this way and thinking of the 

 relation of the bearing wood to the fruit, one will soon get a con- 

 ception of the proper degree of thinning, and proceed to realize 

 it as rapidly as the fingers can fly along the branch. 



It is seldom desirable to divide doubles in peaches; pull both 

 ofT or leave both on, as they may be needed or not to make the 

 load of the tree. Clusters of apples or pears should often be reduced 

 to singles, except where size is apt to be too great. 



All kinds of fruit are clearly subject to increase of size by 

 thinning, but it is with only the larger fruits that the practice 

 prevails at present. The dividing line seems to lie upon the prune. 

 With this fruit thinning is only done by pruning the tree for the 

 reduction of the number of bearing branches, while with some 

 shipping plums hand thinning is practiced. Growers are still 

 striving for a prune naturally of larger size rather than to have 

 recourse to thinning. 



The practice of thinning partially at first, trusting to further 

 removal of fruit later if too much of it survives the natural drop 

 and various accidents, is followed by some growers, but the rule 

 is to finish at one operation. 



