12 The Colorado Experiment Station. 
Fertilisation .—The grape is not a heavy feeder, but on high 
soils it would no doubt respond to a light dressing of manure. 
Heavy applications of manure, however, are liable to stimulate 
the plant to make too rank a growth and then delay the ripening 
and impair the color of the fruit. 
Picking and Packing .—Ripe grapes ship better than green 
ones, consequently they should not be picked before they are ripe. 
The fruit gains little, if any, in flavor after it is.picked. The fruit 
should be picked when it is dry and fewer berries will be broken 
if it is picked during the heat of the day. Grapes should never be 
picked after a rain until they are thoroughly dry. The fruit should 
be picked into shallow boxes or trays and stacked in the packing 
house and allowed to wilt before any attempt is made to cull or 
pack it. The boxes should be stacked in a way to give the fruit 
good ventilation and the house should be well ventilated at night 
to keep it as cool as possible. The fruit should be allowed to wilt 
for at least one day. If packed too green the stems are loosened 
from the berries and it is hard to get the required weight in the 
crate. The bunches will be saved much rough handling if the 
pickers are provided with convenient shears for clipping the stems. 
With the bunches properly wilted so they may be handled 
without breaking off the berries, they should be carefully gone 
over and all broken or imperfect berries clipped out with a pair of 
sharp-pointed shears. One must be careful to see that the inside 
of the bunch is all right. We sometimes find that compact bunches, 
apparently all right from outside appearances, are badly moulded 
near the center. Such a bunch soon spoils a crate of fruit. Small 
and imperfect berries are mashed easily and are a starting point 
for moulds. The stem of the bunch is generally clipped quite close 
to the cluster, but never so close but that it may serve as a handle 
to lift the bunch by. The bunches should be handled in a way to 
preserve as much of the bloom as possible. 
Foreign grapes are packed in the common four-basket carrier 
used for apricots and plums. A tin form similar to that shown 
in Fig. 5 is used and the basket is really packed top first. In putting 
in the first bunches, which are to form the face of the pack, the 
bunch is picked up in a way to let the berries droop and then 
lowered into the form. In this way one builds up the face with no 
visible stems (Fig 7). The form should be well filled and when 
the four baskets are in the crate the face should stand high enough 
to hide the edges of the baskets, giving the crate the appearance of 
being packed solid. When the form is filled the basket is slipped 
over it and the whole thing is turned over, as shown in Fig. 6. It 
will be seen that the real bottom of the form is loose and in re¬ 
moving the form the fruit may be held firmly in place by holding 
