122 THE PLUMS OF NEW YORK. 



fruiting, their growing season is from early spring until late faU, the roots 

 go deep and spread far, the trees transpire large amounts of water, hence 

 may thrive on diluted solutions of plant food, and now and then there is 

 an off year in bearing for the trees to recuperate. 



It does not follow from the above consideration that plums never 

 need fertilizers, but it does seem plain that they need rather less than 

 truck or farm crops and that applications of plant food must be made 

 with exceedingly great care if fertilizing is to be done without waste. There 

 is a growing disposition on the part of plum-growers to experiment very 

 carefully and know that they are getting the worth of their money before 

 using any considerable quantity of fertilizers for their trees. 



Thinning the fruit should be a regular practice with plum-growers, but 

 it is the operation in the growing of this fruit about which growers are 

 most careless both as to whether it is done at all and in the manner of doing. 

 Many growers in New York, realizing the great necessity of thinning certain 

 varieties of Trifiora, as Burbank and Abundance, follow the practice 

 very regularly with plums of this group; but the Domesticas are seldom 

 well thinned, though some of them, of which Lombard is a conspicuous 

 example, ought nearly always to have anywhere from one-fifth to half 

 of the fruit removed. Growers of some of the native varieties in regions 

 where these sorts are grown say that under cultivation some kinds of these 

 plums will bear themselves to death if a part of the crop be not removed 

 in most years. Those growers in New York who thin, do the work as soon 

 as possible after the Jtme drop has taken place. 



HARVESTING AND MARKETING. 



Plum trees in this climate begin to bear when set from three to five 

 years. The Triflora varieties will bear soonest, the Old World varieties 

 next in order, say at four years from setting, and the native sorts, as a 

 rule, come in bearing last. At eight or ten years of age, prolific varieties 

 of the Trifiora and Domestica sorts bear in a good year about three bushels 

 of fruit ; the Insititia and native varieties, on the Station grotmds, at least, 

 do not bear as much, though most of the plvmis of these two groups bear 

 more regularly than the first named groups. 



Plums in this State, and east of the Mississippi generally, are picked 

 and put upon the market just before they reach edible condition ; while 

 farther away they must be picked much greener. It is the practice in 

 the East to pick while still somewhat green because the fruit so 



