STONE FRUITS 135 



Do not allow the pickers to bruise the fruit in handling. This is a 

 very important rule and one difficult to enforce. In handling the larger 

 fruits like peaches and large plums, take the fruit in the hollow of the hand 

 and grip it firmly with the entire hand. Never take it between the thumb 

 and finger. With plums and cherries always have the stem attached. 

 This means that the stem must be gripped by the finger and thumb. 



Never pick these fruits when wet. This rule has very few exceptions. 

 Fruit which is picked while wet looks badly and keeps worse. Brown rot 

 is almost certain to develop in it. 



So much for picking. Next for packing. Have a convenient packing 

 room. If possible have the fruit brought in on one side, packed in the 

 middle and delivered for marketing on the other side. There is then less 

 confusion. Have a table for the packers and seats if they want them. 

 They can work just as fast sitting down. See that the sorting is done 

 rigidly. Nothing discourages customers like finding a few poor number 

 two peaches in the middle of a basket of firsts. Be extremely careful that 

 the best fruits do not gravitate to the top of the baskets. It is probably 

 legitimate to turn the blush side up on the face, but this is as far as it is 

 wise (not to mention honest) to go in facing. 



Plums and peaches are sold for the wholesale market in the round 

 Delaware basket of various sizes, and, for a more select trade, in the six- 

 basket Georgia carrier or crate. The latter wall not pay for cheaper grades 

 on account of the greater cost of packing. To a limited extent these fruits 

 are also sold in the Climax baskets. For strictly local trade both these 

 fruits may be sold in the little baskets of the Delaware type with wire 

 bails, holding two and five quarts. 



Cherries are most commonly sold in strawberry baskets and crates, 

 also in Climax baskets and for the large and finer sorts in boxes or cartons. 



The desirability of roadside marketing where there is any great travel 

 past the orchard should not be overlooked. The stone fruits lend them- 

 selves especially well to this type of traffic and one who has never tried 

 it will be agreeably surprised at the amount of fruit which can be turned 

 into cash in this way. Moreover, it offers an outlet for the over-ripe, soft 

 grades which would not stand transit to market. 



REFERENCES 



"Plums and Plum Culture." Waugh. 



Virginia Expt. Station Bulletin (Extension) 1. "Peaching Growing in Virginia." 

 New Jersey Expt. Station Bulletin 284. "Packing and Shipping Peaches." 

 Canadian Dept. of Agriculture Bulletins: 



201. "Peach Growing, Peach Diseases." 



226. "Plum Culture in Ontario." 



230. "Cherry Growing." 

 Farmers' Bulletins, U. S. Dept. of Agriculture: 



426. "Canning Peaches on the Farm." 



440. "Spraying Peaches for Brown Rot, Scab and Curculio." 



631, 632, 634. "Growing Peaches." 



