COLD STORAGE OF FRUIT. 



513 



men against the warehousemen for cold 

 storage charges and other damages, especi- 

 ally when the selling price of the frnit has 

 been lower than anticipated. 



Happily, for all interests concerned, the 

 hanaling and the storing of fruit, like the 

 care of the orchard, are bemg reduced to a 

 scientific basis. We are coming to appre- 

 ciate, more and more, that the warehouse 's 

 the last link in the chain of successful fruit 

 growing, depending for its strength on the 

 character of the management of the orchard, 

 the care in picking, packing, transporting 

 and other handling of the fruit before it 

 reaches the storage chambers. 



The cold temperature of the warehouse 

 exerts no mysterious influence on fruits ; It 

 simply retards the ripening processes and 

 checks, or may prevent, the development of 

 its diseases. A fruit is a living body ; 't 

 ripens slowly in a low temperature and 

 quickly when the temperature is high. The 

 diseases spread rapidly in high tempera- 

 tures, and some diseases, like the apple scab 

 and bitter rot, are checked by the tempera- 

 ture best adapted to the storage of fruit. 

 Other diseases, like the molds, which pro- 

 duce the soft brown rot in apples and pears 

 and in some other fruits, and which cau=e 

 most of the repacking of apples in the 

 spring, grow slowly in the lowest tempera- 

 ture in which the fruit may be stored with- 

 out freezing. 



The cold storage treatment does not 

 obliterate the differences that exist in the 

 apples when they enter the warehouse ; i t 

 rather retards, while not preventing, their 

 normal development. If two lots of apples 

 diflfer in ripeness or in the amount of disease 

 with which they are affected, in the amount 

 of bruising, or if the conditions in which 

 they were grown cause them to vary, cold 

 storage can only check the development if 

 these differences. 



Cultural conditions produce an important 

 influence on the keeping of fruit, though 



this feature is scarcely recognized in practi- 

 cal warehousing. Apples, for instance, that 

 are grow^n rapidly and to abnormal size, like 

 those from young trees or from orchards 

 unduly stimulated by tillage and cover crops ; 

 fruit produced on quick-acting sandy soils, 

 or that from trees bearing a light crop, con- 



UNUS WOOLVERTON B. A. 



The recently appointed Superintendent of the Ontario Fruit Ex- 

 periment Stations, Mr. Linus Woolverton, B.A., of Grimsby, has 

 long been well known to readers of The Canadian Horticulturist as 

 the editor of this magazine and through the numeious public offices 

 he has held. During November Mr. Woolverton tendered hisjresig- 

 nation as editor of The Horticulturist to the directors of the Ontario 

 Fruit Growers Association that he may be free to devote his energies 

 to the new duties he has assumed. Few fruit growers in the world 

 are better posted, in regard to different varieties of fruit, than Mr. 

 Woolverton, who has made a special study of this subject for years. 

 His wide knowledge of varieties will, undoubtedly, be of gieat value 

 him in his new line of work. 



tinue to ripen relatively fast in the storage 

 house and reaches the end of its life earlier 

 in the season than the same variety when 

 grown more slowly. Such sorts as York- 

 Imperial, Hubbardston, Pound Sweet and 

 Northern Spy. from young trees, deterio- 

 rate one to four months earlier thaii the same 

 varieties from older trees. 



