Fruit-growing 261 



with burlap or canvas. A grain sack hung over the shoulder 

 is poor equipment for apple picking ; nevertheless they are 

 very often used. Fruit is easily bruised by knocking the sack 

 against the ladder and branches and in transferring it to the 

 sorting table. When sorting fruit, as much care is necessary 

 as when gathering it. Sorting-tables lined with burlap or 

 canvas prevent much bruising (Fig. 108). 



Grading of the product is necessary in fruit selling. A well 

 graded basket of peaches, for example, will bring more on the 

 market than an ungraded one. Often it pays to sort fruit to 

 size. A basket of small apples of uniform size will usually bring 

 as much money as a basket of large and small ones mixed. 



Honesty of pack is good business. When a grower has con- 

 vinced his customers that the bottom and middle of a container 

 of fruit are as good as the top, he has done much toward sell- 

 ing his produce at an advance over the market price. 



149. Pests of fruit plants. An exhaustive discussion of 

 the pests of fruit plants would require more space than can here 

 be devoted to it. Consequently only a very few can be briefly 

 discussed. Each kind of plant has pests that injure it, but 

 fortunately these pests can be controlled, usually by spraying 

 the trees with insecticides and fungicides (Figs. 103 to 105), and 

 in some cases, as in the California citrus groves, by fumigation 

 of the trees with hydrocyanic acid gas that is liberated under- 

 neath canvas tents placed over the trees. Fig. 109 shows the 

 vessel in which are the materials to form the gas being placed 

 under the tent. Nursery stock is sometimes freed of pests by 

 fumigation, also. 



It has been estimated that the work of insects alone causes 

 a loss of over $700,000,000 each year in the United States. 

 Much of this loss could be prevented by proper methods of 

 combating the pests. 



San Jose scale. One of the most destructive pests of fruit- 

 trees is the San Jose scale. Its chief damage is to tree-fruits 

 and currant bushes. Fortunately, although this scale cannot 



