FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
175 
er women can do. The fruit until 1912 
was handled for me by the Indian Rivei 
and Lake Worth Pineapple Growers’ As¬ 
sociation, E. P. Porcher as Manager. 
The 1912 crop was handled by Chase & 
Company. 
I have handled the crop only after it 
has been grown, but there is no good rea¬ 
son why a woman can not be a grower 
as well as a shipper. She can not do the 
manual labor required to grow the fruit, 
but she can superintend the growing just 
as easily as any other crop. She can 
consult the literature published, study con¬ 
ditions peculiar to her section, and learn 
what fertilizer the soil in her particular 
location requires to feed the pineapple 
plant. To produce a good sound fruit, 
proper care and fertilization are necessa¬ 
ry. In my experience I have lost only one 
shipment from decay, and that was a 
small one. I have received good prices, 
and prices that did not pay for taking the 
fruit to the railway station. On the av¬ 
erage for the entire time it has paid well. 
It is lot$ of fun to check up and compare 
notes with your neighbors, especially 
when you find that your sizes run just a 
little larger than the other fellow’s. Then 
too, the curiosity to see just what the 
next shipment will bring keeps one’s ex¬ 
pectations keyed up. During the year 
1909 and 1910 the crop scarcely paid ex¬ 
penses, but we kept on planting and ship¬ 
ping. The prices for the 1912 crop were 
somewhat lower than the average for the 
eight good years. 
HOW TO ESTIMATE THE CROP. 
When the fruit is half grown one can 
estimate the expected crop with a fair 
degree of accuracy, and determine about 
how many wraps and crates will be need¬ 
ed. A simple way is to* count the fruits 
on every sixth bed. Multiply the num¬ 
ber of fruits found on each bed by six, 
add the several sums obtained, and di¬ 
vide the product by thirty. The counting 
of fruits on each sixth bed will cover the 
various conditions that may occur in dif¬ 
ferent sections of the field. The number 
of fruits packed in crate ranges from 
18 to 48, so we can safely use thirty as 
an average. In ordering wraps I esti¬ 
mate 1,000 wraps to each thirty crates. 
Having found how many wraps and crates 
will probably be required, it is an easy 
matter to order them and the nails for 
making and nailing up the crates. It is 
also necessary to see that shipping sten¬ 
cil, number stencil, and ink pad are at 
hand, and that baskets, bins, and mittens 
are ready for use. This is quite as sim¬ 
ple as ordering the material for one dress. 
I dislike to be personal, yet I cannot 
better illustrate what I wish to make 
clear to you than to give an outline of 
the vacation of myself and two daughters, 
aged 16 and 14, during the summer of 
1912. We shipped 700 crates of pineap¬ 
ples, doing all the work of making crates, 
wrapping, packing, nailing up and sten¬ 
ciling the crates, in fact, everything from 
the time the fruit came from the field un¬ 
til it was ready to be loaded on the wag¬ 
on and taken to the car. We are eager to 
take up the shipping of the crop of 1913. 
The lifting of the crates and other heavy 
work is done by the laborers. 
It is a simple matter to instruct the la¬ 
borers to break the fruit at its proper 
stage of ripeness. Fruit that gets too 
