The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1872-07-03
Gpetsias State Sn,srnal.
WEDNESDAY EvE'G, JULY 8, 1872.
Agriculture in California.

In California the rains begin late in October.
The grass is green all winter blowing be-
gins on the first of December; wheat, bar
ley, oats, and other crops are sowed as soon
as the land can be made fit and sowing
and planting are continued as late as March.
Thus the husbandman has three or four
months to put in his crops. Trees are also
transplanted in this season. South of San
Francisco, and in the great San Joaquin
Valley, frost is rarely known, roses bloom
all the winter through, the flower garden
is constantly full of flowers, and many
shade trees, like the acacias, the pepper
tree, and the live oaks, keep their foliage
green the year round. Corn is planted
from March to May, and harvested as late
as December. In the southern counties,
and in the San Joaquin Valley especially,
many farmers take two crops from the
same field-wheat or barley for the first,
and corn for the second; and | have seen
fields which yielded, in a good season,
ninety bushels of corn for this second crop.
Wheat and barley are commonly sown for
hay, and cut before the heads fill, in April
OF May. Where this is done it is usual to
plant corn on the same ground when the
hay crop is cut. Thus the farmer gets two
valuable crops from the same field. The har-
vest season for wheat, barley, and oats, is
in the latter part of May and in June.
After the middle of April the rains. cease,
and the whole harvest season is absolutely
without rain. Thus the farmer is not hur-
ried, and the harvest proceeds with none
Of that haste and anxiety about the wealth
or which trouble the eastern farmer. The
small grains are usually gathered by a
m achne called 'header," which clips off
only the heads of the grain stalk. Wheat,
oats, and barley are threshed on the field,
put into bags, and left either on the field
or along the railroad, for weeks often, in
the open air, and until the crop is sold and
shipped. The grain does not sweat, nor is
it liable to injury from this exposure. Hay,
too, is baled or stacked on the field, and
left there until it is wanted. Potatoes are
often left in the ground long after they are
fit for digging. Thus it is evident the
farmer has, in the long, dry, California
summer, an immense advantage over his
eastern competitor. Hcneeds fewer hands,
he is not hurried, and he requires no costly
granaries or barns TO contain the products
of his fields.
Nor does he need to put away much food
for his cattle. A quarter OF an acre of
beets, replanted as they are used, will sup
port COW during the whole year. Work.
horses receive barley and hay, but sheep
are never fed market cattle tatten in the
pastures, and horses not at work get no
food except what they pick up in the fields,
in winter as we'll as summer. The alfalfa,
or Chilian clover, which is now beginning
to be largely sown, does well to feed to
pigs, to cows, and even to plow-horses,
and bears enormous crops. On low ground,
or where it can be irrigated, as much as
twenty tons have been taken from an acre !;
it is not cut from December to April, but
yields from six to eight cuttings in the
year. Cattle and horses are more easily
kept in good condition in California than
elsewhere in the United States, and the
farmer needs no such substantial stables as
in the Eastern States.
Fruit trees bear much earlier than in the
East. The peach bears peck in the Sec
ond year from planting the pit; the apple
gives a crop at five years, and begins to
bear at three; the curculio is unknown; and
such perishable fruits as plums and cherries
keep far longer than with us. / have eaten
cherries and strawberries in Colorado which
had been brought from Sacramento--a four
days journcy-and they were in perfect
order. The growth of fruit and other trees
is extraordinary. The eucalyptus, fine
Australian evergreen shade tree, has made
twenty feet in a year q have seen one,
eight years from small cutting, which was
seventy-five feet high and two and half
feet in diameter at the base) the apricot
becomes almost forest tree in size; and in
the southern parts of the State it is the GUS
tom to make fences of sticks of willow,
sycamore, or cottonwood, cut to the length
of eight feet and stuck into the ground in
December. These strike root at once, and
grow so rapidly that in the second year the
farmer cuts his fire-wood from these living
fences.
Moreover, the variety of fruits cultivated
in the farmers orchard, especially in
Southern California, is much greater than
with us. | have seen, commonly, in
, orchards, the apple, pear, peach, cherry,
ounce, plum, nectarine, pomegranate-a
most lovely tree of tall shrub when in
bloom the fig, which bears two crops a
year; the orange, lemon, almond, olive,
English walnut and apricot and you may
eat strawberries, wherever care is bestowed
upon them, in every month Of the year.
Fruit trees are all free from disease, though
the pear-slug begins to be troublesome in
some places and the finest varieties of
fruit known in the East grow freely here.
Charles Nordhof, in Hapey's Magazine
for July.