In the picking, grading and packing of the fruit is where the great majority fail.  After they have grown the fruit carefully and successfully, they fail to properly harvest and dispose of it.  This fault lies in the fact that they have specialized in the production of their product and have given little time or attention to the marketing of it.  They realize, though, that success in fruit growing depends as largely upon proper marketing as upon proper growing.

The first step in marketing is the picking of the fruit.  Fruit, as any other product, should be picked at a certain time; and the grower who allows his fruit to remain on the tree or bush too long, as is often done with the apple, until his work is caught up, is the grower who receives unsatisfactory prices for his product.  Many farmers bring windfalls and bruised apples mixed with the hand picked ones and expect as much as the grower who carefully picks his apples.  The picking utensils are also often a cause of injury.  Tin pails, wooden buckets and boxes are used to too great an extent.  These naturally bruise more or less of the apples as they are put into the pails, especially if extreme care is not used.  The pouring of the fruit from one receptacle into another is still another source of injury.

The small fruit grower usually handles his fruit with greater care than the apple grower does, for the simple reason that improper handling of these fruits soon shows itself, and the grower may find that he is unable to dispose of his fruit.  The most common cause of injury to small fruit is over-ripeness.

[Illustration:  P. L. Keene.]

The improper sorting and grading of fruit is another cause of unprofitable returns.  All bruised, wormy or injured apples should be discarded at picking time.  The presence of only a few inferior fruits in a lot will bring the price down considerably.  The same holds true with berries, and is even more important, for if one berry rots it soon spreads disease to the other berries.  For this reason the sorting out of all inferior fruit is essential, even more so than grading.

The grading aids in getting better prices but is not necessary for profitable results.  If small fruit is well sorted, the growers claim that it is not necessary to grade it, for the fruit will then be fairly uniform.

With apples, grading is distinctly beneficial.  Many marketable apples may be blemished so that their appearance is hurt, while their keeping and shipping qualities are but slightly injured.  The best grade must contain apples uniform in size, shape and color, and free from all blemishes.  Hence it is readily seen why at least two grades are essential.  The growers at Mankato do not grade their apples to more than one grade and this amounts only to sorting.  The best of the commercial apple growers carefully sort out the small and injured fruits, but a large portion of the growers even neglect this to some extent.