FRUIT HARVESTING OPERATIONS 5 



ripen much better in the dark in storage than they do 

 on the trees. Many varieties of pears are ruined by 

 being allowed to remain on the trees too long. They 

 often develop a coarse grain and are full of hard, gritty 

 spicules which give a consumer the impression that he 

 is eating sand. Frequently "water core" appears, and 

 the fruit rapidly deteriorates. "When ripened in stor- 

 age in the dark, these spicules or grit do not develop 

 so much and the fruit keeps much longer. 



Cherries are best picked when they are about in the 

 condition to be eaten. If they have to be shipped a long 

 distance they are sometimes picked a little green and, 

 like peaches and apricots, often reach the market in 

 very poor condition. In the famous cherry belt of the 

 Pacific Coast, we often find the growers going through 

 their orchards and picking off a cherry here and a 

 cherry there over hundreds of trees to make up a five 

 or ten-pound package to ship East, and while fruit 

 growers in the Eastern and Northern states are still 

 shoveling snow, these first cherries arrive on the markets 

 in the big cities. Some of them have sold as high as 

 $100 for the first ten pounds. These are largely matters 

 of advertising as such fruit is not usually in very good 

 condition to eat. 



Such fruits as olives, oranges and lemons are picked at 

 several different stages, according to the use to which 

 they are going to be put. Lemons are almost always 

 picked according to size and the stem is cut off witt the 

 shears. The first of the dlives' for pickling are care- 

 fully removed by hand; after that the olives that go 

 into oil are shaken from the tree and gathered from the 

 ground. Such fruit as figs is allowed to drop. naturally 



