Vol. LXIV. No. 2904. NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 23, 1905. WEEKLY, 81.00 PER YEAR 
HOW TO PICK FRUIT. 
A Successful Way With Apples and Pears. 
The first requirement is to grow the fruit right. That 
includes good varieties, healthy trees that have been sup¬ 
plied with proper proportions of fertility and moisture, 
properly sprayed to keep off insects and fungi, and the 
fruit thinned to give it an opportunity to develop to 
best advantage. We use a half-bushel round basket 
with one handle to pick the fruit in, and have an iron 
hook with a loop for a leather strap to fasten to basket, 
the other end of hoops bent that it just hangs over a 
limb or a rung of the ladder. Quarter-inch iron is 
plenty large enough for hooks, and eight or nine inches 
will be about right length to cut the iron for a hook. 
Cut a leather strap about a half inch wide and nine or 
10 inches long, and make a slit near both ends, then run 
one end through the loop in the hoop and put the other 
end of the strap through the slit and the strap and hook 
are securely fastened to¬ 
gether. Put the strap 
around the basket han¬ 
dle and run the hook 
through the other slit 
in the strap and 
draw up tight and it 
is fastened to the bas¬ 
ket. This way is much 
better than tying. We 
use ladders made from 
two pieces of light tim¬ 
ber sawed tapering, so 
the heaviest and strong¬ 
est part is at the bottom. 
Holes are bored through 
both pieces and some 
pieces of tough timber 
are split out for rungs 
and fitted into the holes, 
then wedged, and a few 
nails driven in to hold it 
together securely. The 
ladder should be set al¬ 
most straight for the 
picker to stand on while 
picking, just so it will 
not fall backward with 
him while climbing. If 
it is set leaning very 
much it is more apt to 
break a limb and throw 
the picker off than if 
stood as straight as pos¬ 
sible. The longer the 
ladder the straighter it 
can stand, and the 
shorter the more it must 
lean to stand while the 
picker is climbing. I do not like pickers to climb 
through the trees if they can get the fruit from ladders. 
They often skin the limbs and break them, which can 
be avoided by staying on the ladders. Poor pickers are 
a prolific source of damage to trees. 
The proper way to pick an apple or pear is not to 
take hold of the fruit and pull. By so doing the stem 
often pulls out of the fruit or the twig breaks off with 
the fruit, taking the buds that would make the fruit 
the following year. The picker should put his thumb 
or finger, or both, at the junction of stem and twig, 
and break sideways, so as to leave the stem with the 
fruit and the twig on the tree, and lay the fruit care¬ 
fully in the basket, so as not to bruise it. Fruit does 
not all ripen at one time, and consequently it should 
not be picked all at once. We go over the orchard and 
pick the largest and best colored fruit as soon as it 
will do, and leave the others to grow and color for 
later picking. It will surprise any grower who has 
never done so, nor seen apples picked that way, to 
see how much little green fruit will grow and color in 
two weeks. A picker can take off all the fruit that 
will do for the best grade about the first of October, 
and not get more than half of the fruit picked, and 
two weeks later get nearly as many more first-grade 
apples as he got the first time. What is the use of 
picking those little green apples the first of October, 
when they are almost worthless, and let some of the 
good ones drop from the trees because all of them can¬ 
not be gone over as soon as they should be? By pick¬ 
ing only the best fruit the whole orchard can be gone 
over in much less time than when they are taken clean, 
and then a second picking can be made and if <*eces- 
sary a third. If there is still quite a quantity of green 
fruit when the second picking is made, leave it for a 
third, because it is almost worthless when immature 
and if the foliage remains on the trees the fruit will 
grow and color. 
We have tables to take with the pickers through the 
orchards, and the baskets of fruit are emptied as soon 
as brought from the trees and looked over, graded by 
hand and emptied carefully into barrels and shaken 
as the barrels are filled, so they will be packed tight, 
and headed with a screw press. The empty barrels are 
nailed at the barn before they are hauled to the 
orchard; one head is lined, the other is taken out and 
dropped in the bottom of barrel and the nails in the 
bulge hoops clinched so they cannot cut holes in the 
apples they touch. A man can nail more barrels at the 
barn than he can in the orchard, where he will have 
to be moving. In packing the name of the grower and 
the variety is stamped on the head of the barrel before 
it is filled, and then there can be no mistake about 
what it contains. Nice even-sized, well-colored speci¬ 
mens are selected to face the barrel and placed stem 
down, two layers deep, and then filled up with nothing 
but apples that are good enough to correspond with the 
facing, and pressed tight so they will not shake. The 
top hoop is then nailed and the head lined so it will 
stay till it should be taken out. 1 use inch wire nails, 
but do not like the small-gauge wire for the head hoops 
and the liners. The small nails are all right for the 
bulge hoops. 
Nothing but 2 !/ 2 -inch apples should be packed for 
first grade, and the smaller ones down to 2^-inch can 
be put in a second grade if they are good color. When 
all the fruit is gathered at one picking I would not 
give much for the second grade, as it is not well col¬ 
ored, and is immature, but by making two or three 
pickings nearly all of it will have good color, and be 
ripe enough to taste well, and the second grade will 
keep better than the first usually, and sell in the Winter 
for about two-thirds as much as the first. By thorough 
spraying, four or five times in a season, thinning so as 
to take off all the imperfect specimens to be readily 
seen, and then some of the small ones when they arc 
too thick, and successive pickings, most of the culled 
and poor apples will be done away with, and good fruit 
will be in its stead. The 
culled fruit hurts the 
market for good apples 
more than the same 
quantity of good apples 
without any culls. It 
is necessary for us 
growers to grow and put 
on the market nothing 
but good fruit that will 
keep and please the con¬ 
sumers. How often does 
the poor stuff put on the 
market so disgust the 
buyers that they do not 
care to make another 
purchase of the same 
variety, fearing they will 
not be satisfied? It is 
too often the case. For 
special markets it pays 
to grow and market 
fruit in any kind of a 
package the dealers and 
consumers prefer, and 
the cheap half-bushel 
basket is a nice package 
for home markets with 
early fruits. 
u. t. cox. 
Lawrence Co., O. 
R. N.-Y.—The above 
notes give a clear idea 
of what are more and 
more coming to be rec¬ 
ognized as the essen¬ 
tials in apple handling 
by those who grow fine 
fruit and aim to put it on 
the market in such condition as to bring top prices. We 
know of no part of the job where the apple man can put 
in extra work to better advantage. 
LEAD AND OIL ON FRUIT TREES. 
Partial Success in Pennsylvania. 
We are very much interested in several articles which 
you have published recently in regard to use of lead 
and oil on apple trees. In Fall of 1903, after reading 
Prof. Ahvood’s recommendation, followed by some 
very interesting correspondence with him, we decided 
to risk painting 150 trees. The following Spring every 
tree was sound, whereas much damage was done in 
adjoining rows by field mice. We were so well pleased 
with the result that last Fall we painted the remainder 
of our orchard (over (*>.000 trees) and also went over 
the 150 previously painted, as the growth had some¬ 
what cracked the paint. We thought that we had 
solved the problem, and rested easy when we heard 
PEACH HANDLERS ON A WESTERN NEW YORK FARM. Fig. 293. See Page 697. 
