310 
growers. As a writer has said, a man 
can make $10 a day thinning his fruit. 
ERNEST WALKER, 
Fayetteville, Ark. 
Spraying Results in Needs for Thinning 
A new problem promptly presents itself 
along with the first results of thorough 
work in spraying — overloading of the 
trees with fruit. The trees set and per- 
sistently retain, oftentimes, twice, thrice 
or four times the number of apples that 
they can mature. Where these conditions 
occur there is no work that will pay bet- 
ter returns than carefully thinning the 
fruit. A surplus apple or a defective ap- 
ple should be considered as a “weed ap- 
ple,” as it will not only be worthless it- 
self, but will prevent the fullest devel- 
opment of the perfect apples which it 
crowds. It is an excellent plan to relieve 
overloaded trees by removing the defec- 
tive apples and thinning those remaining 
until they hang from six to eight inches 
apart. The total quantity in bushels, at 
picking time, will not be appreciably les- 
sened, because individual specimens of 
the smaller number of apples will attain 
much larger size. 
In addition to the profitable results 
of thinning, so far as the size and quality 
of the fruit is concerned, the effect is very 
beneficial to the trees in various ways, as- 
sisting them materially in retaining 
health and vigor and promoting in a 
greater or lesser degree a regularity of 
erop production. 
F. H. Barrov, 
Wooster, Ohio. 
Will It Pay? 
Most mature apple trees have a tend- 
ency to overbear and during recent years 
it has been demonstrated that it pays to 
remove a half or two-thirds of the apples 
on all heavily loaded trees. Surplus ap- 
ples may be regarded as weeds. They 
are of not much value in themselves and 
restrict the growth of others. Thinning 
does not necessarily reduce the yield, but 
on the contrary greatly increases the 
yield of first-grade fruit. Besides that 
of improving the size and quality of the 
fruit there are several reasons why a tree 
should be thinned. There is a great drain 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
Fig. 1. A Small Branch Bearing Ten Apples 
This number should be reduced by half, leav- 
ing the apples spaced somewhat as shown in 
the figure to the right. The same branch 
after five apples have been removed. These 
apples were allowed to become too large be- 
fore thinning. 
on the vitality of a tree in the maturing 
of so many individuals. Each apple has 
its supply of seeds, and these form the 
most concentrated part of the fruit. By 
removing one-half of the apples we relieve 
the tree of the necessity of maturing half 
the seeds and in doing so we do not re- 
duce the crop of fruit. By relieving the 
strain upon a tree during the growing 
season, the fruit buds for the following 
year are likely to be better developed, 
and it is believed also that thinning tends 
to encourage the annual bearing habit. 
Thinning lessens the loss from the break- 
ing of limbs and gives the grower an op- 
portunity to destroy insect-infected fruit 
and thus reduce the number of insects 
for the following season. 
The common objection to thinning is 
the time it takes. There is no weight to 
such an argument for there is only a cer- 
tain number of apples to be picked and 
