The more successful gardener and fruit-grower, as a rule, is the one who carefully grades his produce. It is sometimes claimed that produce marketed as harvested, good, bad and indifferent, will bring more money in the aggregate than if sorted into numerous grades. This is pure fallacy, as a visit to the metropolitan markets would convince the most skeptical. It frequently happens that a lot of stuff is brought in from the plantation, which if shipped to a market 50 miles from where grown is there only second class and sells accordingly; while if this same stuff were taken to a home market it would bring a good price. Here again does our point against mixing varieties come in. Soft strawberries in the same box with firm varieties, even if of a better color, will have the effect of reducing the net amount received for the shipment. Of course it would hardly be good economy to lose the second grade of fruit rather than take it to market! In such a case successful growers have two sets of packages different in appearance. The packages for the second grade of fruit are neat and attractive, and have a private mark which the commission man will understand as meaning that the contents are second grade.

Oftentimes a good price will be obtained for this second grade fruit, especially if it should reach the market when fruit is scarce. Good packers make this second grade of fruit look attractive by the pains taken in packing and arrangement. We have seen a half-dozen crates of handsomely colored fruit which was extremely soft and good only for immediate use sold to a large hotel in New York simply because they were attractively packed. Anything inferior to the second grade is not sent to the New York markets by growers who understand their business, but usually finds a resting place on the refuse pile.

It is perhaps more difficult and less profitable to grade vegetables than fruit, but still it should be done when possible, especially with winter varieties. It is of course understood that in green vegetables, nothing that is specked or inferior in any way will be used. The packing of apples is an art that few growers as yet understand, for they will insist on putting in specimens that are badly specked or bruised, and as a result it is only a short time before nearly all the fruit is a mass of rot. There is no question but that careful grading is a profitable course to take, and we venture to assert that there are not a half dozen instances on record where a lot of mixed fruit brought the same good price as a similar lot sorted into two grades and sold in the same market.