GATHERING AND PROFITABLE UTILISATION OF APPLES AND PEARS. 203 



If very choice pears or specimen apples are being gathered they 

 should be gathered into very shallow baskets, better if in single 

 layers and taken singly out of the baskets. With large crops of 

 commoner fruit when emptying the fruit out of the basket it 

 should be let roll out gently and steadied by the hand ; in fact it 

 should always be kept in mind that fruit is easily bruised, and 

 cannot be too carefully handled. I have often in country dis- 

 tricts seen pickers (gathering fruit from standard trees) use a 

 bag slung round their bodies as a receptacle. Nothing can be 

 worse, as every movement of the picker rolls the fruits against 

 one another, and bruises them more or less according to the 

 tenderness of the variety. For dwarf trees of course no ladder 

 is required, but for standard trees the ladder should be long 

 and light, so that it can be easily reared by one man. For tall 

 bushes, pyramids, or young standard trees the best contrivance 

 I have seen is made by three very light ladders fastened together 

 at the top by hinges to a piece of iron made in the form of a 

 triangle. This will stand alone without support, does not break 

 or bruise the trees, and can be easily shifted round them. A 

 full description, illustration, and mode of making it was given 

 by a correspondent in the Journal of Horticulture of a recent 

 date. 



Storing. 



As I said before, to make the most money of your fruit you 

 will sometimes want to store it, probably for some months, and 

 upon the construction of your store or fruit room, to a great 

 extent, depends the condition and therefore the market value of 

 your fruit. You may take it as a general rule that apples have 

 the greatest market value if plump and fresh looking, without a 

 trace of shrivelling at the time of marketing ; but a large pro- 

 portion of the apples marketed after Christmas are not in this 

 condition ; hence the more care should be taken that you know 

 how to properly store if needful. 



For high-class or specimen fruit a properly constructed fruit- 

 room with shelves is necessary : this need not be an expensive 

 structure, but it should be made so that a low and uniform 

 temperature can be maintained. It should be made so that it 

 can be kept quite free from draughts, but capable of being 

 ventilated when necessary. I find as a rule apples require to 

 have good ventilation for the first three weeks or a month after 



