8 MODERN FRUIT MARKETING 
and, after being thus dried, are removed by hand. 
Through it all, there is one general rule to keep in mind: 
That all first or second quality fruit should be picked 
by hand and handled with every possible care. 
Stems On or Off.—Different sections of the country 
have different ways of handling the fruit, but the cus- 
tom is generally to pick all of the more perishable fruits 
with the stems on. Every stem that is pulled out of a 
fruit breaks the skin, and this allows an entrance for 
some of the decay organisms. Some fruits separate 
naturally from the stem, while in others it is quite diffi- 
cult to remove the fruit and keep the stem with it. With 
some of the more tender fruits, such as strawberries 
and sweet cherries, the fruit is picked with the stem 
on. In order to do this the thumb and finger is placed 
each side of the stem itself, the hand not touching the 
fruit. 
This entails considerable care on the part of the picker, 
but in actual practice has always been found successful. 
In the United States, the fruits that are*picked with the 
stems on are more or less the same in all of the different 
fruit-growing sections. The following list includes the 
more common fruits which are picked with the stems on 
or off. 
STEMS WITH REGARD TO COMMON PRACTICE 
Stems on Stems off 
i ae AH " Sa — me | 
Apple Plum Orange Raspberry 
Pear Persimmon Pomelo Blackberry 
Quince Grape Peach Dewberry 
Cherry Strawberry Apricot Almond 
Lemon Currant Prune Walnut 
Citron Fig Olive 
Lime 
