Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women - Wise Acres Yearbook (Ambler, PA)

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culture for women in 1905. Gardening, poultry, bee keeping arc the main subjects. Switzerland has one or two schools of gardening, the one at Chateau la Chatelaine being presided over by an English lady. Belgium, Holland and Denmark are well supplied with agricultural schools, and “traveling courses’' are a feature of their method. Teachers go to certain towns and provinces and give on the spot their lectures and instruction to the farmers. Dairy work for women is made a specialty. The schools at Bouchout in Belgium, and Charlottenlund, in Denmark, have courses in gardening, fruit growing, etc., designed especially for women. The school of horticulture for women at Briccointe-Robert, in France, is one of the latest to join the ranks. It was founded in 1913, and is bound to be one oi the important schools of its kind—so practical as are the French. The graduates of these various schools are found today all over the world. Canada, South Africa, Teneriffe, British Columbia and the United States have all had their attractions, and women with this thorough training in this the oldest of the arts, are everywhere making good. J. b. haines. THE THINNING OF FRUIT Too often the orchardist wlio is careful in the pruning, spraying and cultivation of his trees thinks that he cannot spare time and money to thin the fruit. This is a serious mistake. No other orchard operation pays better. The profit of the crop depends to a large extent upon the proportion of number one fruit. When crops are very large, the best grade may be the only one to yield a profit, and in years of scarcity fine fruit brings fancy prices. In thinning, the blemished and infested fruits are removed, leaving only what is sound ; and if this should he too thick, it is thinned out until the individual fruits are not nearer to each other than t ie width of one’s hand. This reduces the amount of culls to a minimum. Nature’s purpose in bearing fruit is to produce seeds, and these cause a much greater proportional drain on the tree than does the rest of the fruit. A small apple usually has as many and as perfect seeds as a large one; and a bushel of large apples is much less exhausting to the parent tree than the same amount of small ones. In the case of peaches the difference is still greater, as it takes as much vitality to produce a stone as to form the flesh of several peaches. Thinning the fruit is a great help in conserving the strength of the tree for the following year. Such trees as the apple and pear, that hear their fruit on spurs, do not mature fruit on the same spur on two successive years. Bv removing all the fruit from some spurs early in the season, they will be likely to bear the next year. Careful experiments indicate that the statement that thinning overloaded trees does not reduce the yield for that year is overdrawn, in the case of apples, though the quality and value of the crop are increased. But probably in a series

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YVolseley. It is conducted on a smaller scale and with rather different methods, but aims at giving gentlewomen, at a moderate rate, a practical training. At Thatchani is a scnool of gardening where a specialty is made of Frenc.i gardening methods. Hotbeds, cloches and intensive cultivation are the special points, and 28 students are active all the time on five acres of ground. In all these schools, as well as those elsewhere in Europe, a minimum of lecture work and a maximum of pracical work is the rule, the ratio being about two hours of lectures to six hours in the garden. They aim to be especially training schools of especial practical value. Both Swanley and Studley attract students from abroad, Germans, Bus sians, Swiss, a few Americans, and even a Japanese having found their way there. The fees average from $430 up. In both Germany and England, there are several schools presided over and taught by graduates of the large colleges, and often trained women with their own commercial undertakings will take pupils and apprentices to train as gardeners. In Germany there are at least three important schools of gardening for women. Marienfelde, near Berlin, was founded in 1894 by Fraulein Dr. Castner Over 50 women from German), Austria, Russia, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Roumania, Norway and even from America are in attendance, and this school has become a pioneer and leader in the work of horticultural education for women in Germany. Frauenschule Maidburg, situated close to Kempen in Posen was opened in 1904 by Der Verein fur wirtschaftliche Frauenschule auf dem Lande. It is designed primarily for educated women, and the courses include beside gardening, dairying, domestic economy, etc. Godesberg on the Rhine has a school of gardening of which one of the coprincipals is an English woman from one of the English colleges. Here on a small estate 50 students are taught practical gardening and fruit growing, all the work being done by the students and their teachers, for no men gardeners are employed—only a couple of laborers for the heavy work. The lectures on horticulture are given by those members of the staff who take the same subjects in practical gardening, and for pure theory visiting lecturers from Godesberg or Bonn come in. In Russia, as long ago as 1889, Baroness Budberg established an agricultural school for women on her husband’s estate at Ponicruove in Courtland. As well as horticulture, this school i Produced teaching in dairying, domestic economy, etc., and many women have passed through it. The example of the founder stimulated other women of rank to similar efforts in Poland (18941 and in Bavaria (1895) where graduates of her school have been engaged to start institutions of the same kind Tn Hungary. Austria and Spain the movement has been taken up, in spite of conservative resistance. At Niguarda. near Milan. Ttalv, Miss Aurelie Josz opened a school of horti-

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of years trees whose fruit is systematically thinned each year will exceed the yield of similar trees whose fruit is not thinned during the same period, and the net; profits from the thinned trees will be much larger. A considerable part of the thinning may be done by the removal of superfluous branches. The direct removal of fruits should take place immediately after the “June Drop,” when a larger proportion of the blemished fruit falls. If a canvas be spread under the tree before thinning, the fruits removed may be easily and quickly collected and destroyed. Peaches should be removed when somewhat larger than cherries and apples and pears when three-quarters of an inch or so in diameter. The impression that thinning means a great deal of extra work is erroneous. The fruits rapidly gatheied and dropped in June do not have to be picked and graded as seconds or culls in the autumn, when the fruit grower is more pressed with work than in early summer. No great amount of additional time is required, and the work is more evenly distributed through the season. Plums may be thinned when about the size of cherries; and not only is there a gain in the size and quality of the fruit, but the danger of the spread of brown rot is much less than when this is done. Currants may be thinned by clipping off the tips of the clusters with scissors before the flowers open. An experiment of this kind at the New Jersey Experiment Station in 1889 showed a marked gain in size, quality and yield by this method. As the work can be done rapidly, it would probably pay better when the fruit is sold in a discriminating market. The direct thinning of fruit on raspberry and blackberry bushes did not seem profitable in some experiments conducted at Cornell; but the amount of fruit on such bushes may readily be controlled by careful pruning in spring after the buds have developed sufficiently for one to judge how much bloom there will be, some allowance being made for the occurrence of late spring frosts. J. L. Doan, Department of Fruit Growing. THE GARDEN SPOT OF ITALY “Madonna!” The young Italian intoned the word softly, caressingly. And while she waited, her dark eyes fell upon the great bunch of flowers in her arms and then lifted to the face of the English girl who sat dreaming. For one moment she lingered hesitatingly and then, half kneeling, held out her hands with their light burden. “Madonna Mia!—the flowers------■—!” The dreamer stirred and from some distant vision brought her eyes back to this other vision at her feet. “Why, child, child, where have you come from? Are you Kundrv, from Klingsor’s magic garden? Rut no. you have never heard of Klingsor nor of Wagner, have you?”