In common with grading and sizing, packages are neglected in marketing New York pears. Some growers pack in bushel baskets; a few send the crop to market in half-bushel baskets; a large size of the Climax basket is occasionally seen in the markets filled with summer pears or small Seckels; a keg holding about a bushel or more is less used; a pear barrel holding a peck less than an apple barrel was formerly more used than now; Kieffer is often sent to the market in apple barrels. A very few New York growers ship in boxes, but these are few indeed. In all excepting the boxes, the pears, having been graded, are carefully put in the packages, sometimes in layers and sometimes hit or miss, but the package is always faced. Good grades are usually labeled, though the same attention is not given to labeling pears that is given in putting up apples. Truth is, the packing of pears in New York is a decade or two behind the packing of apples.
The commercial pear-grower now stores his pears in cold storage if he keeps them any length of time after harvesting. A few varieties, of which Beurré Bosc is most notable, do not keep well in cold storage, but most of the mainstays in the pear industry keep fairly well in artificial cold. There is, however, much to be learned about the commercial storage of pears. There seems to be little information that can be relied upon as to how low the temperature should go; how humid the atmosphere should be; how long the pears can be kept in good condition; and how different varieties behave under these several conditions.
Perhaps a word should be said as to how the pear can be ripened best in the home. After harvesting, the pears should be placed in a cool sweet-smelling fruit-room in shallow boxes or spread upon shelves to acquire in time full flavor and color. Most pears part with their moisture readily, and the pear-room must not be open to draughts which usually cause the fruits to become hard and leathery or to shrivel. If the pears are to be kept long, wrapping in paper helps to prevent shriveling. Nearly all pears ripen perfectly in cool or cold storage, but a few late winter sorts ripen better if brought into a temperature of 60° or 70° for two or three weeks before their season.
A large part of New York’s pear crop is canned in commercial canneries. Canners usually pay high prices, and the crop, when sold to them, need not be so carefully picked, packed, and otherwise handled. It is a mistake to assume that pears for the cannery can be shaken from the tree or handled roughly otherwise. Neither do the canners want the poor grades, after the good pears have been sent to the market. Large sizes are usually preferred, and the fruits must be well formed, free from serious insect, fungous, or mechanical injuries, and at a particular stage of maturity which the canner specifies. The profits in selling to canners are usually more certain, and are often quite as great as in selling on the markets. The cannery is a splendid safety valve to the pear industry in this State. Pears are not dried commercially in New York as they are in California, although it would seem that here in the center of the apple-drying industry of the world pears might also be dried with profit.
Most of the pear crop of this region is now sold to local buyers or on consignment to city dealers. Co-operative methods are just beginning and promise much. There are several reasons why the pear, even more than the apple, which is more and more going to the markets through co-operative associations, should be handled by organizations of growers. Thus, an association could load a car quickly, which few individual growers can do; pears are not now, but would be, graded and packed under one standard; more favorable transportation rates would be secured; and, most important of all, the pear crop would be distributed to the great markets of the country without the disastrous competition that attends individual marketing. If the pear industry is to grow in the State, pears must be largely marketed through the central packing associations that are now being rapidly organized to sell fruits.
No reliable data can be obtained to show what the costs are in growing pears in this State. It would be hard to obtain such data, for pear-growing is now a game of chance from start to finish. Good pear-lands are not hard to obtain, and the risks to tree and crop attendant on weather are not great, but the trees are everywhere subject to blight; which, despite the recommendations of plant pathologists, cannot be controlled, and which annually destroys thousands of trees, ruins others, and sooner or later upsets calculations of costs and profits in almost every pear-orchard in the State. Other pests, as psylla, the scab-fungus, and codling-moth beset the pear and make profits uncertain. When all goes well, the costs are about the same as in growing apples, while the profits are somewhat greater.[23] But with blight to contend with, most of the economic factors are inconstant, and calculating costs and profits is guessing pure and simple.
DISEASES OF THE PEAR
The pear is attacked by a half dozen or more diseases in New York, of which two, at least, need treatment every year, in every orchard, and on nearly every variety. One, pear-blight, is about the most malignant of the diseases of the orchard, for which there is no antidote and no alleviation or preventive except by the most drastic sanitary measures. The other, pear-scab, is always present but not always destructive, although some varieties are always injured by it. The scab, however, is amenable to treatment and at its worst only destroys fruit and foliage, seldom endangering the life of the tree. The four or five other diseases of the pear in New York are of minor importance and are readily controlled by the treatment necessary to keep in check the scab-fungus. Pear-blight merits attention first.
Pear-blight is a malignant bacterial disease, very contagious, usually virulent and so terrible in its consequences as to warrant the common name fire-blight. No part of the tree is exempt from destruction by the malign bacterium that causes blight of the pear. Root, trunk, branch, leaf, flower, and fruit are all attacked, turn black and wither under the disease. Few plant diseases produce more disastrous results. The pear competes with the apple in importance in Europe where blight is unknown. In America it is a poor fourth to the apple, peach, and plum, and takes fourth place instead of second because of the ravages of blight. About the most important discovery to be made in pomology is a race of blight-resistant pears. Failing in this, if the pear-industry is to grow, or even continue in its present magnitude, blight-resistant stocks must be found.
The symptoms of pear-blight are so characteristic that the disease cannot be confounded with any other malady or condition of the tree. It appears earliest in the season on the blossoms causing blossom-blight. Attacked by blight, the blossoms wilt, and after the petals fall, fruit and spur show the characteristic blackening of the disease. Blossom-blight may escape the attention of the pear-grower, but twig-blight, a succeeding form of the disease, can escape no one who has the sense of sight. No other disease of the pear brings on such palpable destruction to the tree as twig-blight. No other disease causes such comfortless despair to the grower. Twig, branch, or tree, as the case may be, in all affected parts, turns black, the leaves droop, seeming to show the effects of fire. A marked symptom is, if there can be doubt of those given, that the blackened foliage clings most tenaciously to the dead branches. Twig-blight is the most common manifestation of the disease. Another form of the blight appears as a canker on the trunk and large branches—canker-blight or body-blight. These cankers are dark, smooth, and sunken, with definite margins marked by a crevasse in the winter; but as spring comes on the advancing margins become raised and more or less indefinite. Occasionally an opaque liquid oozes from lenticels newly attacked. On branches, the cankers usually surround a smaller offshoot, sucker, or spur. The disease spreads with great rapidity, by reason of which it is easily told from winter-killing. Injury from cold is also more general, and the foliage browns rather than blackens.