Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III HISTORY OF STRAWBERRY PACKAGES, METHODS OF TRAINING, AND POLLINATION The packages used for shipping strawberries to market have changed with the generations to meet new conditions as they have arisen. The evolution of the modern, cheap, gift package from the clumsy and expensive return package of earlier days has reflected the rapid development of the industry. Early Packages At the beginning of commercial strawberry culture in North America, about 1820, it was natural that the packages should be those approved by English gardeners. In 1821 Massachusetts strawberry growers were advised to carry berries to the Boston markets in pottles, that is, in inverted cones of basket work. The pottle used in England and Scotland at that time contained nominally, one Scotch pint. These are packed one above another in square hampers and are conveyed to the market on a light carriage or frame work hung on springs. Near London it is customary to pack fifty or sixty of these pottle baskets in a large basket, which is then 1 Memoirs Mass. Agr. Soc., VI (1821). placed upon a woman's head, on a small cushion. She trudges miles with it to market.1 Another type of splint basket, called a punnet, was used in the strawberry trade of New York City between 1815 and 1850. The English punnet used in America was a shallow basket of woven wickerwork without handles (Fig. 5). A handled punnet was more popular in the New York market. C. W. Idell relates:2 The first strawberries marketed in New York were wild ones from Bergen County, N. J. The negroes were the first to pick this fruit for the New York market and invented those quaint old-fashioned splint baskets with handles. The baskets were strung on poles and thus peddled through the city. Originally the punnets were...