THE GARDEN.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 471, 14 May 1890, Page 4

THE GARDEN.

(By Hortus.) Fruit Storing. Fruit is usually stored past in some convenient place where it can easily be got ab when wanted for use. At the same time’ every consideration ought to be given as to where and how it will keep best and for the longeatperiod in a firm, fresh and juicystate. Now, it so happens that the means required to secure the one also effect the other. To preserve the fruit in a firm juicy state nothing more is required than a low temperature and the almost exclusion of atmospheric air. The best practical mode of doing this is to pack in perfectly dry sand, using boxes for the purpose, taking care while packing that no two apples or pears touch. The sand should be perfectly dry, and should form a covering of a few inches deep over the uppermost layer of fruit. Sand operates as a preservative, nob only by excluding air and moisture, bub also by keeping the fruit cool, for sand is one of the worst conductors of heat, and moreover, keeps carbonic acid in contact with the fruit. All fruit in ripening emits carbonic acid, and this gas is one of the most powerful preventatives of decay known. Before putrefaction sets in, its three contingencies, moisture, warmth, and the presence of the atmospheric air, must occur. Now, burying fruit in sand or any other non-conducting substance, excludes these or all that can practically be excluded. Fruit, when pulled for keeping long, should be placed on a tayer of dry sand, and the following day stored away, but the air and fruit should be perfectly dry while being 9tored. After the fruit is stored away, the store-room should be kept at as low a temperature as possible. The best of all temperatures is never above 40deg. nor below 34deg. Temperatures quite possible to keep fruit in the Southern parts of New Zealand, are scarcely possible in the Northern portion. Powdered charcoal is even better than sand for packing fruit, and a few boxes of tho latest keeping varieties should always be packed away in it so as to come into use in the early spring The above is the best method of storing fruit in small quantities, but in large orchards this system may not be possible for the want of space; bub the principles recommended will iorm a guide. Where the fruit is to be stored in large quantities, if possible, try and construct a place where the temperature can be kept as even a 3 possible. As a rule, cellars and underground rooms make better storing places lor apples and pears than any structure . above ground. Light is not required to complete the process of ripening ; it is rather injurious. Pears [jacked in cases or placed between two blankets will ripen better, and more evenly, than when they are spread thinly on shelves. American apples, which aie packed for market in barrels, ripen well under that conditionAnother plan which answers well in America, where the climate is much colder in the winter than here, is to pile the fruit in a heap underneath the trees, covering it up with long grass, so as to exclude light and air, and keep a more equal temperature. I have seen in New Zealand late apples keep better among the long grass where they had fallen than in the ordinary store room.