THE ORCHARD.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 867, 12 October 1888, Page 18

THE ORCHARD.

George A. Flemming, a San Jos6 fruitdryer, has given the Mercury some interest, iug facts concerning prunes and prune culture, He gathers the fruit from the trees in the following manner : ‘A neighbour, once in a discourse lately, remarked to me that foreign prunes, pioked and handled at a price far below what we had to ; pay, would eventually kill the prune ihdustry in California. I jokingly replied that I,intended to make a machine to pick prunos, and 1 what commenced iu jest ended in a fact. The idea took hold of me, and before I got home I had conceived an arrangement by which prune-picking would be wonderfully facilitated. It is a simple machine, consisting merely of a very low platform waggon, with a sideboard on one side. Boxes are arranged on the platform, and to the opposite side of the sideboard two sheets of cloth, Bxl6, are attached. The waggon is drawn by one horse, and when opposite a tree two men, one for each sheet, spread them under, one each side of the trunk of a tree, and standing on the outer ends of the cloths gently shake the tree. When all the prunes ripe enough have fallen the two men gather up the sheets, commencing at the outer extremity, and dump tho prunes over into the boxes, with sheets on top. The advantages of this simple contrivance are many. For instance, last year in a large orchard near Saratoga, where the trees boro only a half crop, a boy and a man averaged from four to five tons per day, costing us actually 75 cents per ton for picking. It saves handling the boxes, which are heavy, so often, and keeps out the dust which necessarily gets sifted into tho prunes when handled in the old way.' Prunes iu all cases are dipped in lye and thoroughly rinsed. This is done to crack the skin, which hastens the process of drying in one-half the time, otherwise in many cases the fruit would ferment. All fruits are liable to injury by the ‘sweating ’ process if not perfectly cured. Thoroughly matured fruit without irrigation prodaoes a better quality of dried than irrigated fruit. Irrigated fruit shrinks more and contains less sugar than non-irrigated fruit. All fruits shrink more or less by the process of evaporation. It takes about three pounds of fresh prunes to make one pound of dried.