FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
33 
of long stems ran as high as 85 per cent, 
of the fruit picked. This includes only 
visible injury, and oranges picked with 
stems long enough to injure other fruits, 
either in the picking boxes or while going 
through the washers and sizers. It was 
found also that a great deal of harm was 
being done by dropping the fruit into 
picking sacks and field boxes. Mr. Tenny, 
when he had charge of the Florida work, 
made several experiments on the injury 
caused by dropping otherwise sound fruit 
a distance of from one foot to twenty 
inches. He found that on the average, 
20 per cent, decay developed in this fruit 
after it had been held for two weeks in 
the packing houses, and I have seen in¬ 
stances where 60 per cent, decay develops 
ed from this cause alone. It is reasonable 
to suppose that the fruit this season was 
particularly susceptible to this type of 
injury, since it was grown under condi¬ 
tions favorable to rapid growth, and was 
very heavy and juicy. More attention 
should be paid to eliminating unnecessary 
dropping of the fruit both in the field and 
packing house. Most picking foremen 
and pickers realize now the damage 
caused by clipper cuts and long stems, 
but there are many who do not know that 
as much or more decay may be caused by 
dropping the fruit from one to two feet. 
This point is especially important because 
it is always the weakest point in field 
handling. It is the first place where lack 
of care shows. If a picker is rushed, or 
careless, he at once begins to begrudge 
the extra moment it takes to empty a sack 
of fruit carefully, and if not closely 
watched it is not long before he, and the 
rest of the crew as well, are pouring the 
fruit from their sacks in the approximate 
direction of the field boxes. There is 
no place where a bad example is more 
quickly followed than in a picking crew. 
When there is an unusually large crop, 
or when shipments are unusually heavy, 
as happens in the annual rush for the 
Christmas market, it invariably follows 
that much less care is taken in hand¬ 
ling the fruit. This has been found to 
hold true in citrus fruit handling in both 
Florida and California. ' It has held true 
again this season. There are, of course, 
individual exceptions to this general rule, 
and it is encouraging to note that there 
were some conspicuous exceptions in 
Florida this year. The packing houses 
which made a record under this season’s 
trying conditions handled different types 
of fruit, grown on different types of soil. 
They used different types of packing 
house equipment, but there was one fac¬ 
tor which was common to all of them— 
they were all getting consistently careful 
zvork in the held. 
There are two packing houses located 
about a hundred miles apart which can 
be taken as examples of the conspicuous 
exceptions.I have mentioned. The first 
has held for the past four seasons the 
enviable distinction of having the best 
picking crew in the State. Inspections of 
picking crews covering practically all 
orange and grapefruit sections have 
shown the work done by the crew sup¬ 
plying this house to be unquestionably 
the best. This house has shipped or¬ 
anges throughout the entire season with 
no cars showing heavy decay, and only 
a, very few showing even a slight amount. 
By far the greater part of their ship- 
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