Picking the Fruit 253 



picking was badly scalded or decayed by the first of Janu- 

 ary. None of the immediately stored fruit was scalded or 

 decayed by the first of February, but the delayed Sutton 

 and Rhode Island (Greening) apples were soft and mealy, 

 and one-third were scalded at that time, while nearly 40 

 per cent of the delayed Tompkins King were soft and 

 worthless. The commercial value of these varieties was 

 injured from 40 to 70 per cent by the delay in storage. 



"Apples of these varieties picked from the same trees 

 on October 5, 1902, and stored immediately, and also 

 some stored two weeks later were less injured by the delay, 

 as the temperature and humidity were not sufficiently high 

 to cause rapid ripening or the development of the fruit 

 rots." 



To keep satisfactorily in cold-storage, fruit should be 

 well colored; in other words, it should be well matured. 

 Poorly colored fruit shows a tendency to scald in storage, 

 and this explains why the buyer insists upon having well- 

 colored fruit. The color may be improved by proper 

 pruning, thinning, irrigation, and tillage and by planting 

 varieties that ripen within the season. It is possible to 

 secure a more uniformly matured and uniformly colored 

 grade of apples by picking over the trees several times in- 

 stead of taking all the fruit at the first gathering. As yet, 

 many growers have not reached this stage in the growing 

 of fancy fruit, but it will no doubt come 



While in many of our fruit-sections we have not begun 

 to wrap the fancy apples, it has been fully demonstrated 

 that wrapping prolongs the life of the fruit in storage. It 

 largely prevents the spread of rot fungi from one fruit to 

 another, checks transpiration, and saves the fruit from 

 many bruises in rough handling. 



