1930] Praca CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA 
11 
A good drying peach should preferably be a freestone with a small 
pit. The flesh should be of a clear yellow with no red color-at the 
pit, of firm texture, and sweet in taste. A peach like the Muir 
requires about five pounds of fresh fruit to make one pound of dried, 
while more juicy varieties, such as the Elberta require about seven 
pounds. In order of preference, the three leading drying varieties 
are: Muir, Lovell and Elberta. 
Characteristics desired in shipping varieties are color, size, taste, 
quality, capacity to withstand shipment without bruising and to keep 
well on the market. Most early dessert peaches have white flesh and 
many are clingstone varieties. The market prefers a yellow-fleshed 
freestone peach, having a skin relatively free from fuzz. A variety 
of peach that will meet these demands and also be satisfactory for 
canning or drying has distinet advantages. The Elberta and the 
J. H. Hale more nearly meet these requirements than do other var- 
jeties. Other shipping varieties include Mayflower, Alexander, 
Triumph, Hale’s Early, St. John, Early Crawford. Strawberry, Sal- 
wey, Foster, and Levi. 
Time and Sequence of Ripening. —Canneries prefer varieties that 
supplement the canning of other fruits. For example, the Tuscan 
ripens early and is available when few other fruits are being canned. 
Hauss, Paloro, Libbee, Peak, and Sims mature between the ripening 
of the Tuscan and Phillips and, therefore, make the canning season 
continuous. 
For drying varieties less stress is placed on the sequence than on 
the time of ripening. The variety should ripen so as to be dried 
before the early fall rains and enable delivery to the packing house by 
the end of October. When the acreage is large and labor scarce, 
sequence in ripening, however, also becomes important. It may be 
advisable in such cases to choose more than one variety in order to 
distribute harvesting and drying over a longer period of time. 
In the case of fresh fruit, the time of ripening is especially impor- 
tant. The shipping fruit must be on the market when the demand is 
good. There must not only be a good demand for peaches as compared 
with other fruits, but there must be a satisfactory demand for the 
particular variety. New commercial plantings of shipping peaches 
should not ordinarily include a variety that must compete with a 
more popular one sold on the same market, although local preferences 
and fruit for home use may warrant a limited planting of the less 
popular varieties.