APPLES 323 
These vari- 
The grower 
eolor, but should not be soft. 
eties drop badly if too ripe. 
himself must be the judge of his local 
conditions of season, soil, shipping dis- 
tance, and the like. 
The time of picking has a marked in- 
The 
fluence upon the color of all apples. 
Fig. 3. 
may be use 
the lower limbs 
yellow and green colors change after pick- 
ing but the reds change very little. With 
many varieties it will pay to make sev- 
eral pickings; especially is this true of 
red and striped varieties. The increase 
in size and added depth of color gained 
by leaving the immature fruit for a sec- 
ond picking more than repays the grower 
for the additional trouble. Summer apples 
usually attain their best flavor upon the 
tree, but late fall and winter apples are 
better some time after picking. 
Most of our commercial varieties of 
pears, if allowed to mature on the tree, 
become granular, and also have a ten- 
dency to develop core rot. In order to 
have juicy, fine and smooth grained fruit, 
it is necessary to harvest the pear while 
it is still hard and green. The most com- 
mon practice has been to recommend that 
the pear be severed from the tree as soon 
as the stem will separate easily from the 
spur by giving the wrist a gentle twist. 
In some cases it is recommended that the 
pears be picked when they reach a certain 
diameter. With some pears, at least, it 
Will be found advantageous to pick the 
fruit over an extended period. The Bart- 
lett, for example, can be picked over a 
period of six weeks, and where an extend- 
ed period like this is allowed, the total 
weight of the fruit gathered from the 
trees is very materially increased. 
Occasionally pears are picked by clip- 
ping the stems with scissors or knives. 
This is done in order to place the fruit 
on an early market and thus reap a fancy 
price. If the fruit is picked too early, 
however, it will be very insipid, and tend 
to shrivel; it will have a tendency to 
scald; and the texture will be leathery. 
As concerns the Bartlett pear, recent in- 
vestigations conducted in the Rogue River 
valley by the United States Department of 
Agriculture have shown that it is better 
to allow the pears to hang from ten days 
to two weeks longer than is now the com- 
mon practice; that when this is done the 
fruit becomes larger, develops a better 
quality, and keeps better. 
Picking Operations 
One of the first lessons a foreman must 
give a picker is to tell him not, under any 
circumstances, to bruise or puncture the 
skin of the fruit or to rub off fruit spurs 
or injure the tree in any way. If the fruit 
is bruised or punctured it soon decays, 
and thus losses which are attributed to 
Fig. +. A Strong Type of Orchard Ladder. 
Special claims are made for this ladder on 
account of the fact that no nails are used 
in its construction. A tall ladder like this 
or similar type is useful in gathering fruit 
high up in the tree. 
the commission man are often the fault 
of the fruit grower himself. 
The organization and distribution of 
labor is always a problem of orchard man- 
agement. In picking, it is usually ad- 
visable to divide the pickers into crews, 
giving to some of the older men and to 
