260 GRADING AND PACKING 



portance compared to the grading, and if growers will grade 

 carefully and uniformly, and will pack honestly and skilfully, 

 there is likely to be little difficulty about names. 



FRUIT PACKING 



Now as to the question of packing, we need, first of all, a satis- 

 factory equipment. This means suitable packages, a packing 

 table of some kind, usually a press, besides such accessories as 

 wraps, stencils, stemmers for apples, and various other things 

 varying with different fruits and different types of packing. 



Packages for Apples. — Since the package will, to a consider- 

 able extent, determine the kind of equipment needed, we may 

 begin with a discussion of packages in general. For apples we 

 have principally the barrel and the bushel box. Both of these 

 packages have their advocates and both have their place in 

 marketing apples. The barrel is the typical eastern package, 

 while the box is used in the West to the exclusion of all other 

 packages. The box, however, is gaining ground, though slowly, 

 among the eastern growers. The claims for the box, which seem 

 to be fairly well founded, are that it carries the fruit in better 

 condition, that it is a more attractive package, and that its 

 smaller size makes it more convenient for many consumers. On 

 the other hand, the barrel is an old and well recognized package 

 (Fig. 124). Fruit can be handled in it at less cost than in 

 boxes and it will stand rough usage in transit much better than 

 the box. We ought not to have rough usage, but neither ought 

 we to have a great many other things that we do have. Nothing 

 but apples of the very highest grade ought to go into boxes. It 

 is essentially a high-grade package, and if a customer finds poor 

 fruit in it he feels defrauded and rightly so. The writer would 

 meet the argument that there is a demand for small quantities of 

 the poorer grades by suggesting that these be put in some other 

 type of package. Possibly the flat bushel box generally used for 

 vegetables might be used for these low^er grades of apples or 

 some type of basket might be selected, but the regular bushel 

 apple box should be reserved for good fruit. One large grower 

 solved this problem by usingr a special type of the round, 

 Delaw^are peach basket for his ''drops" and other lower 

 grades of apples. These grades were never put into any other 



