72 The Fruit-Growers Guide-Book 



handled as carefully as eggs. The practice of transferring! 

 the apples from the picking bucket to a heap on the 

 ground to await the packers in the orchard is not recom- 

 mended for fancy apples. They will be more or less 

 bruised; they will heat and unless carefully covered, 

 they will be scalded by the sunlight. Some growers trans- 

 fer the apples from the pickers directly to the wagon, 

 where they are loaded in bulk and hauled to the packers 

 and poured out on the packing tables. This always bruises 

 the fruit to a greater or less extent, and is not recom- 

 mended. The best practice is to transfer the fruit from 

 the pickers' buckets into lug boxes of three-eighth inch 

 sides and bottoms and three-fourths inch ends with a 

 cleat across the top at each end to keep the boxes apart 

 when piled on top of each other. It is an advantage in 

 handling the boxes to have hand holds sawed in the ends 

 by which they can be carried. 



Apples should be hauled from the orchard to the pack- 

 ing house on low wheeled wagons equipped with good 

 bolster springs. A low wheeled wagon will pass under 

 the limbs of the trees more easily than the high wheels, 

 and will cause less damage to the low limbs and to the 

 fruit that hangs low on the trees. Where lug boxes are 

 used, make a platform for the wagon, around the edge of 

 which there is a one-inch strip to keep the boxes from 

 sliding off. The boxes can be piled two or three high, 

 and such a wagon is far more easily loaded and unloaded 

 than an ordinary wagon box. 



Pickers should be paid by the day rather than by the 

 quantity. This will insure less injury to the fruit, as. when 

 paid by the quantity the pickers will have no interest than 

 to get as many apples off in a day as possible. By receiv- 

 ing a certain sum for each day's work, they will exercise 

 more care to pick each apple so as to retain the stem and 

 to handle the fruit without bruising. Apples picked while 

 wet from rain or heavy dew will rot quickly. It is better 

 always to wait until the trees have dried off before com- 

 mencing to pick after a rain. 



