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of fruit is contained in one space and the covers are sometimes re- 

 moved and the fruit stolen. 



Some fruit has been shipped from our experiment orchards in 

 the California fruit crate, illustrated by Fig. 5. This is a style of 

 package where the individual fruit receives attention. The pack is 

 the same all the way through and every peach must be the same 

 grade and size to make a desirable pack. Commission men have told 

 us that it did not sell well when used for eastern grown peaches, 

 and that in the New York market the people believed it was Cali- 

 fornia fruit, and that the Georgia carrier was to be preferred. So 

 far as the prices we received for fruit in this package were con- 

 cerned, however, they were practically the same as we received for 

 the same grade of fruit in Georgia carriers. 



Fig. 6 illustrates the Georgia peach carrier with which you are 

 all familiar. This package has been gradually taken up by the 

 growers in the southern part of New Jersey as the best shipping 

 package. These packages as they come packed with fruit from 

 Georgia, contain six baskets. The fruit stand men usually take the 

 fruit out of these six baskets and fill up seven smaller tills. These 

 carriers, as they come from the south, are new, and when the fruit 

 man takes the fruit out as soon as received, they are hardly stained 

 and are in good condition. These crates prove a bargain to some 

 peach growers about New York and Philadelphia because they can 

 secure them from 5 to 6 cents each. 



When the matter of packing peaches in such package as the 

 California fruit crate or the Georgia carriers is considered, we 

 need to have fruit that is of the same size and grade. If we have 

 large, small and medium sized fruit on the same tree and harvested 

 at the same time, the work is necessarily slow. We need to grow 

 fruit of uniform size to have it pack well. One of the first things to 

 consider is the thickness of the setting of the fruit on the trees. I 

 have in mind a grower in New Jersey who had a tremendous crop 

 last season. The trees were planted 22 feet apart each way six years 

 ago and this year the trees were simply bent double with the crop be- 

 fore the fruit began to color. He was inclined to thin the fruit, but 

 was persuaded by others not to do so, with the result that he had a 

 hard task tying the trees up so that they would not be ruined by 

 breakage, and the fruit was not nearly as large as it should have 

 been. When we have a heavy set of fruit on the trees it ought to 

 be thinned. In most cases we can say that no two fruits should be 

 closer than four inches apart. Some varieties, however, are much 

 smaller than others, and need to be thinned even more severely. I 

 do not mean to recommend thinning where there is only an occa- 

 sional cluster of fruit upon the tree, but where there is a good set 

 of fruit through the tree in general, thinning should be resorted to. 

 The work of thinning should be done about the time of the so-called 

 "June drop," when we can determine which fruits are weakly pol- 

 linated, or affected with curculio or have been blemished in some 

 manner. It is very easy to thin the fruit upon well pruned trees. 



