APPLES 



323 



color, but should not be soft. These vari- 

 eties drop badly if too ripe. The grower 

 himself must be the judge of his local 

 conditions of season, soil, shipping dis- 

 tance, and the like. 



The time of picking has a marked in- 

 fluence upon the color of all apples. The 



Fig. 3. "Eclipse" Orchard Ladder Having an 

 Especially Wide Base. A low ladder like this 

 may be used for gathering the fruit from 

 the lower limbs. 



yellow and green colors change after pick- 

 ing but the reds change very little. With 

 many varieties it will pay to make sev- 

 eral pickings: especially is this true of 

 red and striped varieties. The increase 

 in size and added depth of color gained 

 by leaving the immature fruit for a sec- 

 ond picking more than repays the grower 

 for the additional trouble. Summer apples 

 usually attain their best flavor upon the 

 tree, but late fall and winter apples are 

 better some time after picking. 



Most of our commercial varieties of 

 pears, if allowed to mature on the tree, 

 become granular, and also have a ten- 

 dency to develop core rot. In order to 

 have juicy, fine and smooth grained fruit, 

 it is necessary to harvest the pear while 

 it is still hard and green. The most com- 

 mon practice has been to recommend that 

 the pear be severed from the tree as soon 

 as the stem will separate easily from the 

 spur by giving the wrist a gentle twist. 

 In some cases it is recommended that the 

 pears be picked when they reach a certain 

 diameter. With some pears, at least, it 

 will be found advantageous to pick the 

 fruit over an extended period. The Bart- 

 lett, for example, can be picked over a 



period of six weeks, and where an extend- 

 ed period like this is allowed, the total 

 weight of the fruit gathered from the 

 trees is very materially increased. 



Occasionally pears are picked by clip- 

 ping the stems with scissors or knives. 

 This is done in order to place the fruit 

 on an early market and thus reap a fancy 

 price. If the fruit is picked too early, 

 however, it will be very insipid, and tend 

 to shrivel; it will have a tendency to 

 scald; and the texture will be leathery. 

 As concerns the Bartlett pear, recent in- 

 vestigations conducted in the Rogue River 

 valley by the United States Department of 

 Agriculture have shown that it is better 

 to allow the pears to hang from ten days 

 to two weeks longer than is now the com- 

 mon practice: that when this is done the 

 fruit becomes larger, develops a better 

 quality, and keeps better. 



Picking Operations 



One of the first lessons a foreman must 

 give a picker is to tell him not, under any 

 circumstances, to bruise or puncture the 

 skin of the fruit or to rub off fruit spurs 

 or injure the tree in any way. If the fruit 

 is bruised or punctured it soon decays, 

 and thus losses which are attributed to 



Fig. 4. A Strong Type of Orchard Ladder. 

 Special claims are made for this ladder on 

 account of the fact that no nails are used 

 in its construction. A tall ladder like this 

 or similar type is useful in gathering fruit 

 hiffh up in the tree. 



the commission man are often the fault 

 of the fruit grower himself. 



The organization and distribution of 

 labor is always a problem of orchard man- 

 agement. In picking, it is usually ad- 

 visable to divide the pickers into crews, 

 giving to some of the older men and to 



