The Wenatchee daily world. [volume] (Wenatchee, Wash.) 1905-1971, 1909-05-19
PROF, WALDEN WRITES ON
THE Thinning Of FRUIT
Horticultural Editor of the Ranch Dis
cusses Pertinent Questions of the
Great Industry of Fruit Raising I'M
the State of Washington---Tells How
to Grow for Profit.

One OF the things that is necessary
that must be we'll understood ant
well carried out is the thinning o.
fruit. Not all kinds of fruit neef
thinning. We rarely thin cherries and
do not consider 1t necessary to theil
sale. For exhibition purposes we may
very properly thin cherries to the end
that we may secure extra large speci.
mems, but for the market this is not
needed. Plums and prunes need thin.
ming for the best results in selling
although with many growers it's not
deemed necessary with these fruits
The three fruits that must be
thinned in order to success are apples,
peaches and pears. On the Pacific
coast the necessity for this thinning is
past the experimental stage. Occa-
sionally a new conner may be found
who will debate the question, but the
experienced fruit grower in this sec
ton has passed that point. The OBJ
-
peaches and pears, raised by the new
conner, are expense and waste. I know
an old couple who rented an orchard
and when told by the owner that they
must thin their peaches. they would
not do it. As they paid cash rent,
1t was no loss to the owner if they
neglected this work. They said it
would be such waste to pull off the
young peaches and greatly reduce the
crop. The result was that their
peaches when ripe were unstable
were too small-and fell off and rot
ted. When they saw their neighbors,
who had thinned their peaches, get
ting SO cents per box for their fruit
while their own were rotting, they
saw their mistake.
1t is not a waste to thin fruit
There will generally be as many boxes
OF the thinned fruit as there would
have been left on the trees If half
the peaches are taken off the trees
and the remaining half should double
in size. there will be no loss in guam
tity. Any one can see that 1t is true
that in thinning peaches We often
take off much more than one-half
and it may be true in some cases that
we may diminish the number of
boxes by very heavy thinning. But
which will pay the grower better, 20
have fewer boxes that he can sell at
good price or to get two or three
times as many boxes that he can't
sell at all.
The man without experience may
think he can sell his small peaches at
some price, but he can not do it, IN
our old peach orchard we had quite
number of seedlings and they bore
much sooner than our budded
peaches. One year the buided peaches
were nearly all killed but the seed
lings were full. The seedlings were
harder than the budded peaches.
Peaches were scarce that year and I
tried hard to sell these Seeding
peaches, but could not get enough
for them to pay the expense OF labor
and boxes and expressage, so we did
not make a cent on them. 1t may be
thought that the reason we could not
make anything on these Seeding
peaches was because they were not
good peaches. Not so. Some of the
best peaches I ever raised were among
those peaches. 1t often happened that
when l felt peach hungry" l would
go to some of those freestone seed
lings and take fill. They were so
good that l can seem to taste them
yet. The fact is that nothing him
their size. People just will not buy
such fruit. 1t is a well known fact
that the big snowy liberia sells far
bettr than many a finer but smaller
peach.
/ have never known peaches to be
too large to sell we'll but I have
known extra large apples 60 sell at
an inferior price. In 1904 we had
fine crop of Mammoth Black Twigs,
called by the American Pathological
society, the Arkansas. Apples were
quite low in price that year on &C
count of the large crop in the United
States. We sold our four tier pack
of these apples for 60 cents per box
T. o. b. at our shipping station, but
could get but so cents per box for the
four and half and three and a half
tiers. Since then the demand of buy
ers have changed and we get the same
price for four tier apples and three
anI hale