HORTICULTURE 211 



over, satisfactory returns are often secured from the early pickings. 

 This method is particularly successful with Clapps Favorite and 

 Bartlett. Both of these varieties will ripen up tolerably well when 

 they are not much more than half grown. The same principle is 

 successfully used in handling Le Conte and Kieffer pears, but these 

 should be nearer maturity to be good. There is one great advantage 

 in the application of this principle of premature picking in case of 

 these two great varieties, in that it distributes the marketing season 

 over a longer period, and thus tends to give the country time to 

 consume the crop without any glut in the market. 



A Kieffer orchard skillfully managed, therefore, may be picked 

 over in the latitude of Maryland about September 15, and then 

 successive pickings may take place for three or four weeks. The 

 earlier picking will be marketed and sold while the later fruit is 

 still on the trees, and by a little attention to storing the later pick- 

 ings in a cool place the fruit may be marketed from September 20 

 to Thanksgiving time or later without cold storage. Cold storage, 

 of course, still further lengthens the possibilities of the marketing 

 season for any given variety. Pears may be put in cold storage in 

 about the same way as apples, the temperature required varying 

 from 33 to 38 F. They are usually stored at a temperature a few 

 degrees higher than that in which apples are stored, in fact are 

 given the treatment of summer rather than winter fruit. Unfor- 

 tunately, pears do not stand cold storage as well as apples. This is 

 especially true of summer pears. Extra precautions are necessary 

 in both picking and handling the fruit before it is put in storage, 

 and in the subsequent handling after it is taken out. Cold storage 

 pears are very apt to blacken and become unsightly after they are 

 taken out of storage, even though they may be in fairly good con- 

 dition. Summer pears, particularly, are inclined to lose their flavor 

 in cold storage. Kieffer, Anjou, Bosc, Easter, and some other late 

 varieties when put into cold storage hard and green seem to stand 

 the treatment very well and come out several weeks afterwards in 

 nearly the same condition as that in which they went in. They may 

 then be brought into a warm room for a few days before they are 

 wanted and ripened up nicely for eating. 



The packages used for pears vary widely in different parts of 

 the country. As before mentioned, the half-bushel peach basket 

 is very commonly used in handling the crop for delivery to can- 

 neries in Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey. This basket usually 

 goes under the name of the five-eighths basket. Very few of the 

 models, however, hold five-eighths of a bushel. This basket with a 

 slatted cover is also very largely used in shipping by steamer and 

 otherwise to Baltimore and Philadelphia. It is in some respects 

 the least desirable package of all except in cases w j here the grower 

 can haul the fruit direct to the city markets, or where cars can be 

 filled by packing the entire car tightly with the baskets. The pear 

 box, usually with a middle partition and holding from 3 pecks to a 

 bushel, is very commonly used in the Eastern States. Some very 

 rough specimens of this type of package, made of undressed laths 



