BuEEAXJ OF Ageioultuke 501 



Thinning is very extensively practiced, and though it is some- 

 what of an expensive operation it is found cheaper to harvest the 

 fruit in June than in September. 



Just after v^hat is knovFn as the June drop, the trees are gone 

 over and only one apple is left on a fruit spur, and these rarely 

 closer than six iuehes. Compared with the amount of fruit left on 

 the ground, it looks as if there were few left on the tree. Before 

 picking time, however, the branches are so laden that they. have to 

 be supported by props. A tree can only matiire a certain number of 

 bushels of fruit, and there is more profit in having apples that will 

 pack 96 to the box than where it takes 200 or more to make the same 

 quantity. This thinning partially accounts for the enormous size of 

 the northwestern fruit. I am not sure that thinning, to the extent 

 practiced in the northwest, would be profitable here, but I do believe 

 the trees that seem to have more fruit than they can properly ma- 

 ture, could be pruned after the June drop and a portion of the fruit 

 removed in this manner, at a very low cost. Or some of it could even 

 be shaken off. There is certainly no profit in a tree that can produce 

 only, say, ten bushels having these ten bushels of fruit the size of 

 marbles, when three-fourths of it could have been removed and the 

 same quantity harvested of large first class apples. 



When the trees are thianed and only a portion of the fruit spiirs 

 allowed to set fruit each year, there is not so much talk of "off 

 years " as we hear in some other parts of the coiintry. In fact, there 

 is practically never a complete failure in the northwest. 



One thing that struck me as rather peculiar, not particularly 

 here but in other places that I have visited in the middle west, was 

 that some people thought they were being especially up-to-date by 

 spraying. No grower would attempt to produce fruit in the north- 

 west without spraying. It is as much an orchard practice as pruning 

 or harvesting the fruit. While we may not have as many diseases 

 and insects to combat as in the older orchard regions, yet the ones 

 we have, if not kept under control, are very destructive. In many 

 sections the San Jose scale, and in some places the Oyster Shell are 

 very bad. Also both the Green and Wooly Aphis and, with the ex- 

 ception of one region, the Codlin Moth, I think, is as bad as it could 

 possibly be here. Probably our worst fungus disease is the apple 

 and pear scab. 



Power sprays are used almost exclusively and a pressure from 

 two hundred to two hundred and fifty pounds maintained. 

 Thoroughness is the watchword. The growers know what they are 

 spraying for and what sprays to use. They do not simply spray 

 because they are told to, but they know the composition of the spray 

 and the results to be expected. They do not get a little hand pump 

 and stand off and squirt some juice at the tree, but the work is done 

 intelligently and thorougUy, 



