[Illustration: FIGURE 24.--The square braid basket is widely used as a local market package for tomatoes. The faced pack looks better and is easily put up. Covers permit stacking six or eight high.]
A few shipping sections, notably New Jersey, still use the 12-quart climax basket for tomatoes.
Local markets use various containers for tomatoes,--the Boston bushel box; a half bushel of the same depth also used in New England; lug boxes; the Jersey tomato crate; and very commonly, 8 and 12-quart square braid veneer market baskets. Peach baskets and bushel baskets are now used but little, being too deep for good carrying. The diamond market basket of earlier years has about disappeared--being too flexible and not suited for stacking. The square braid with suitable cover may be stacked very satisfactorily in trucks but is hardly substantial enough for rail shipment.
[Illustration: FIGURE 25.--The Connecticut half bushel box. Figure 19 shows how this is packed.]
Hot house tomatoes travel in square braid, climax or paper fibre baskets, now rather commonly, the latter. The Cleveland section sells some millions of baskets of 8-quart capacity but carrying 8 pounds of tomatoes in two layers, usually with stems on, usually wrapped and sometimes with a paper divider between layers.
[Illustration: FIGURE 26.--Repacked tomatoes. Southern tomatoes go to wholesale houses that specialize in ripening and repacking. Many kinds of packages are used. The flat 10-pound box is one of the popular packs especially in the Boston area.]
[Illustration: FIGURE 27.--Cellulose film is used for repacked tomatoes.]
Cannery tomatoes move in field crates belonging to the canner or, in Jersey, in 5/8 bushel baskets, about as awkward a container as could be readily devised unless it should be the Jersey tomato crate with its two cover strips permanently fastened.
Repack tomatoes are sometimes replaced in lugs or in half lugs. Ten pound corrugated cartons are widely used, newer and fancier packs being but one layer deep. Fruits are wrapped with paper or cellulose film. An increasing proportion of repacks are now put up in one-pound cartons with a window of cellulose film, carrying four or five tomatoes. A variation is a paper tray wrapped with cellulose film.