HORTICULTURAL BULLETINS. 351 



years thinning will not be necessary, but in years when the trees are burdened 

 with fruit it should not be omitted. 



Picliing and packing are matters which require the personal attention of the 

 grower. These can not be trusted to hired labor without strict oversight. The 

 peach should be picked and packed as carefully as an orange; should never be 

 poured from basket to basket; should never be bruised in handling; should be 

 carefully assorted by grades; and should be put up for market with an eye to 

 attractiveness, so that the best prices may be obtained. It is not strictly proper, 

 however, to put red netting over green fruit. There is just the right time to pick 

 for market, and this is something to be learned by experience — a day too early and 

 the peaches are green, a day too late and they are overripe and will be soft and 

 bruised and unsalable before they reach the consumer. No fruit requires greater 

 expedition and better judgment in picking and marketing, and in these particulars 

 the peach is strikingly in contrast with the orange, which never worries the 

 grower, but may be picked and marketed any time from November to April, barr- 

 ing accidents from unexpected frosts. 



In general, peach-growers in the eastern states are very careless— almost indif- 

 ferent—as to manner of shipping fruit to market, and the result is such that fruit, 

 while often of a very superior quality, rarely brings as good prices as inferior 

 fruit put up with special pains to make it attractive. The baskets in general use 

 in the eastern states are too large for retail trade. Growers of peaches on a large 

 scale in New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland seem to think that they can not 

 handle their vast quantities of fruit in small baskets. Growers in Michigan and 

 California* have learned better and send their fruit out in much more attractive 

 form, the result being that they get better prices. Florida fruit also comes to mar- 

 ket in good shape, and the Florida crate is one of the best. The choicest grades 

 of peaches should never be sent to market in large baskets, but each fruit should 

 be wrapped separately and sent with as much care as eggs if the best prices are 

 desired. For the canning-house and the wholesale trade the Delaware basket is 

 undoubtedly one of the most convenient forms for shipment. Inferior fruit should 

 be kept at home and dried or fed to the pigs. The unprofitable handling of a large 

 part of such fruit might be avoided by thinning, as already suggested. 



On some accounts it is highly desirable that the fruit should be transported by 

 water if the distance is not great and the journey can be made rapidly, otheiTvlse 

 it must go into cars and the extra jar must be compensated for by rapid delivery 

 and sale. Of course when peaches are shipped long distances in warm weather 

 particular pains must be taken to see that the cars are properly Iced and that 

 there are no delays in transit, and when they come from the Pacific coast they 

 must necessarily be picked green. Eastern growers have an advantage over those 

 on the Pacific coast in the much finer quality of fruit grown and in being near to 

 market, so that their peaches may be allowed to ripen on the tree, something very 

 necessary to the full perfection of this fruit; but these great advantages are largely 

 lost by carelessness in packing and shipping, and consequently the California peach- 

 growers are generally able to command a Ibetter price in New York markets than 

 eastern growers. Mention has already been made of the desirability of planting 

 orchards where competition in transportation exists. This affords to growers of the 

 choicest fruit a reasonable guarantee that the whole of their profit will not be swal- 

 lowed up by exorbitant freight rates. 



In years of great abundance another serious cause of loss is what are known as 

 "slumps" in the market. Most eastern-grown peaches find their way to a few large 

 markets, where prices necessarily break down when a large quantity of fruit is 

 suddenly thrown upon them. At times when a glut exists even the best fruit will 

 scarcely pay for the baskets in which it is shipped, much less for transportation, 

 picking, packing, etc., and this may happen several times during the season. This 

 ruinous state of affairs is not attributable to overproduction, but to maldistribu- 

 tion. Ihe crying need in the eastern states is for a system of distribution which 

 will prevent gluts in the market. It is well known that at the very time when 

 these "slumps" occur in New York and other large centers, hundreds of smaller 

 towns in the interior can not procure peaches at any price. 



The writer has frequently paid five cents apiece for quite ordinary peaches in 

 interior towns of New York and Pennsylvania and further west, when the finest 



♦The California crate brings the fruit safely in car load lots so far as Chicago, but from this point 

 eastward, in the hands of express companies, sometimes as much as 20 per cent, of the peaches are 

 bruised so as to be unsalable, owing to the thin side of the crate. These packages should be made of 

 thicker material or should have a partition through the middle. 



