22 BULLETIN 851, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



BRUSH DISPOSAL. 



There are several methods of cleaning up brush. Ordinarily 

 where large limbs are removed, the finer brush is cut from them and 

 the larger pieces used for firewood. Practically all other brush is 

 burned in the orchard. Often there are vacancies where one or 

 more trees have been removed at some time, and this allows suffi- 

 cient space for burning. The growers use either sleds or low truck 

 wagons for hauling brush. Crews of one, two, or three men are used 

 for loading. Many growers use on the sled a large rack, which 

 can be turned over easily to dump the brush on the fire. It is not 

 unusual to find a grower using one or two 12- or 15-foot poles held 

 3 to 4 feet apart by 2 by 2 strips, and drawn by a team. This 

 device serves as a rake, the brush gradually collecting across the 

 poles. When a load is gathered it is drawn to the fire and dumped. 



Often it is impossible to burn the wood early in the spring, in 

 which case it is placed in piles at convenient places until dry. Some 

 men make a practice of placing the trimmed wood in piles close 

 to the trees as they prune, so that it will be easy to collect at the 

 time that the brush is burned. A few men have homemade brush 

 burners. 



Ninety-two of the growers, or 42 per cent, use a crew of two 

 men and two horses, and 54, or 25 per cent, use a crew of three 

 men and two horses in disposing of the brush. 



Niagara County shows the highest acre charge ($3.34) , and Mon- 

 roe County the lowest ($2.50), making a cost per barrel, respectively, 

 of 4 and 3 cents. 



THINNING. 



Thinning is not an annual practice with the majority of apple 

 growers in western New York. A few men do a little every year. 

 Generally speaking, thinning is practiced by commercial apple 

 growers only during the season of large crops or of aphid infesta- 

 tion. Since the western New York apple grower is to a great extent 

 a producer of field crops and fruits other than apples, much of his 

 time is necessarily taken up with general farm work, so that, how- 

 ever anxious he might be to produce a fancier apple than he is now 

 giving the public, he is somewhat handicapped in this regard by the 

 demands of other equally important enterprises. There are in each 

 county and community, however, fruit men who devote the greater 

 part of their time and energies to the production of the apple. 



Very few of the apples on trees of the age considered in this 

 bulletin can be thinned from the ground or stepladder, and thus 

 thinning here presents a difficulty unknown in the Northwest. The 

 use of an 18- to 25-foot ladder is necessary in most orchards. When 

 it is considered that in a season of large crops the trees yield from 



