166 THE SMALL COUNTRY PLACE 



delicate shade of pink, white or yellow, and when the 

 ridge along the suture seems soft and springy, it is ready 

 to pick for the local market. For home use they may 

 become mellow before picking, but for a distant market 

 they must be decidedly hard but fully grown before 

 picking. 



Packages and Marketing. 



In almost every large peach-growing section some 

 distinctive package is used. Thus in the Lake Shore 

 region of Michigan a cheap bushel basket is used; in 

 California, Georgia, and other Southern States, a six- 

 basket carrier is used, each basket holding about four 

 quarts; while through Maryland, Delaware, New Jer- 

 sey, Connecticut and the Northeast the fourteen to six- 

 teen-quart basket is used. The first and last of these 

 packages are, to say the least, inconvenient, but they are 

 cheap; the carrier is expensive, but carries the fruit in 

 a much superior condition to the others mentioned. 



Varieties. 



New varieties of peaches, as of almost every other 

 kind of fruit, are offered every year, and much money is 

 expended upon them, yet few of these prove of greater 

 value than the old standard sorts and each grower 

 should consult the markets and the varieties he and other 

 growers have tried before planting largely of any one 

 kind. Different varieties, too, will vary much in differ- 

 ent seasons, as well as in different soils and exposure, yet 

 there are those that do well under a great variety of 

 conditions and the latter should be most largely planted 

 unless found to fail under the local conditions under 

 which they must be planted. Among those that have 

 generally proved valuable may be mentioned Champion , 

 Mountain Rose, Old Mixon, Crawford's Early, Craw- 

 ford's Late, Elberta, and Fitzgerald. 



