STATE POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 99 



been rehandled and look on the inside of it and it is practically 

 red with the juice of the berries that have been bruised. So be 

 sure to have all the sorting done in the field. In the picking 

 of fancy berries you have to be very careful that whoever does 

 the picking, handles the berries with the stem. That is one 

 of the things we have to be much more careful about than we 

 used to. The berry should be broken from the plant by the 

 stem and laid in the box without touching it at all. In that 

 way we can get the berries to market in splendid condition. 



The matter of packages I consider is one of the most im- 

 portant things we have to plan for. We should have clean 

 new boxes made of white wood — the very best quart baskets we 

 can get are none too good, and I object very much to the use 

 of the secondhand crate that we have to use, or do use so 

 much in New England. In our own town I think practically 

 one-third of the berries are put into these secondhand crates, 

 and those are generally the poorer berries. In some cases some 

 of the growers make three qualities. The better qualities are 

 packed either in a ten, sixteen or twenty-one quart tray, and 

 in those trays the berries are carried in ta market so that there 

 is no layer above them. Each box sets above the other and 

 is cleated so that it does not set into it. In that way practi- 

 cally all the better quality berries in the vicinity of Boston are 

 handled in the market and bring anywhere from three to ten 

 cents a quart more than the berries packed in crates. You know 

 that in taking the berrjes out of a crate, 32, 48 or 64, you will 

 find a good many of those in the lower tiers are crushed by 

 the weight of the fruit on the carrier between them. So I think 

 in local markets where you can take from your own team into 

 the market the use of some of those packages like the 21 -quart 

 tray particularly, that packs very nicely and takes the same space 

 in width as the bushel box only twice as long, is to be recom- 

 mended. It is being used in our section much more than the 

 32-quart tray. I have used a i6-quart tray which has two 

 layers. That is a great improvement on the 32-quart for fancy 

 fruit and looks a good deal like one of these apple boxes, not 

 quite so high and a little longer. Then in all these packages 

 we ought to have the same kind of a label that will show just 

 the quality, the same as you would in your apples, and in that 

 way we are building up a business which is going to call for 

 more of that fruit. 



