CHAPTER XIY. 



METHODS OF KEEPING AND STORING FRUITS 

 AND VEGETABLES. MARKET DATES. 



Apples. — 



1. Keep the fruit as cool as possible without freezing. 

 Select only normal fruit, and place it upon trays in a moist 

 but well-ventilated cellar. If it is desired to keep the fruit 

 particularly nice, allow no fruits to touch each other upon 

 the trays, and the individual fruits may be wrapped in 

 tissue paper. For market purposes, pack tightly in barrels 



' after the apples have shrunk and store the barrels in a very 

 cool place. 



2. Some solid apples, like Spitzenburgh and Newtown 

 Pippin, are not injured by hard freezing, if they are allowed 

 to remain frozen until wanted and are then thawed out very 

 gradually. 



3. Many apples, particularly russets and other firm varie- 

 ties, keep well when buried after the manner of pitting 

 potatoes. Sometimes, however, they taste of the earth. 

 This may be prevented by setting a ridge-pole over the pile 

 of apples in forked sticks, and making a roof of boards in 

 such a manner that there will be an air-space over the fruit. 

 Then cover the boards with straw and earth. Apples 

 seldom keep well after removal from a pit in spring. 



4. Apples may be kept by burying in chaff. Spread 

 chaff — buckwheat-chaff is good — on the barn-floor, pile 

 on the apples and cover them with chaff and fine broken or 

 chopped straw 2 feet thick, exercising care to fill the 

 interstices. 



Cabbage. — The most satisfactory method of keeping cabbages 

 is to bury them in the field. Select a dry place, pull the 

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