CHOPPING. 
67 
overshadow the ripening fruit. When this happens the young wood may 
be removed, and some of the leaves also. This defoliation, however, 
must by no means be carried to excess, and is, in fact, seldom necessary. 
Unless performed with much skill and care, it had better be let alone. 
Neither must the leaves be removed at all unless they are nearly ripe, and 
the buds in the axils full and plump ; for unless this is the case, our 
attempts to ripen more perfectly the fruit of one season would but ruin 
the crop for the next. 
During dull, cold seasons, too, various expedients may be used to 
hasten the ripening of apples on small trees. Tiles or slates are some¬ 
times placed under horizontal cordons, to reflect back more heat on to 
the fruit. Plantations of dwarf, bush, or pyramidal trees are cleared 
of ground crops and raked smooth, so as to throw back more heat. 
Arable orchards are also more favourable to early and perfect maturity 
than those on grass. Glass lights or frames are also at times used to 
place over Eibston Pippins, Nonpareils, and other choice apples on walls 
in cold seasons or northern latitudes. But in general the cultivator 
attempts but little in the way of direct efforts towards ripening the 
apple crop. He is careful, as we have seen, to choose favourable sites 
and situations; to plant sorts suitable to his locality in the best soil 
he can command, and then he trusts to the seasons to ripen his crops 
sufficiently for gathering. 
There is, however, a wide distinction—often lost sight of by amatWrs 
—between fruit ripe enough to gather and fit to eat. It is only in the 
case of a very few varieties that the two terms are synonymous. Most 
of our finest apples should be gathered long before they are fit for 
table. The ripening goes on, and is consummated, it may be, months 
after the fruit is detached from the trees. Ripening is, in fact, as much, 
or more, a chemical than a vital process. It is a thing of many stages or 
degrees. There is a stage of ripeness which is the best for gathering, 
another the choicest for eating, and others beyond that, and yet others 
/ 
again, until maturity merges into mellowness, and finally runs into 
rottenness. 
' IV, — Gathering. 
How can the cultivator know when to gather his apples ? Chiefly by 
experience. The earlier varieties drop as soon as ripe. They alone 
ripen up to the eatable stage on the tree. Eye, nose, palate, touch, all 
tell us they are ripe. But late sorts give little or no sign. It is also 
quite impossible to construct a time table for the gathering of different 
varieties. The difference |of a few miles—sometimes often of only a few 
