Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-11-08
The ORANGE CROP.
Prospect for the Present Year and Out
look for the Years to Come.

Prospect for the Present Year and Out
look for the Years to Come.
The oranges which are beginning to cut
SO important figure on the fruit stands
are not California oranges; they come from
Mexico, Central America and the islands.
Our crop will not make its appearance to
much extent in the markets for couple of
months or thereabouts. When it does, it
promises to be large, and the fruit to be
cheap.
Ten years ago that crop was roughly esti-
mated at 10, 900 oranges. When Nord-
hoff wrote, in 1873, the total number of
oranges trees planted was said to be under
80 600. In 1872 San Francisco received
l 800, 600 oranges from southern California,
and 5000, 600 from abroad. This year the
total crop of southern California is esti-
mated at 100000 boxes, containing 200
oranges each-say 100000 oranges in
all. The crop to be harvested in 1887 will
not be less than 100000 boxes, and may be
100000 Thus the growers will have to
find market for 140 100000 oranges.
When Nordhoff wrote, fears of over sup
plying the market were freely entertained.
Wise men were prepared to prove that the
crop was already larger than the country
could consume, and the growers would
have to feed the fruit TO swine, as they do
in parts of Spain where there is no trans
portation. But the experience of the past
ten years has proved that, at a fair price,
the orange market of the East cannot be
glutted. The great cities of the East will
consume all the fruit we can send them
and want more; the demand grows more
rapidly than the supply. Hence, in many
parts of the South, orange orchards which
were planted ten and twelve years ago, and
were neglected through mistaken appre-
hension that the owners would be unable
to sell their fruit, are being put in order,
the dead trees replaced, and the soil cleared
of weeds.
About one-half the orange crop of Cali
fornia is consumed on this coast, including
Utah; the other half goes East direct. Thus
we may say that less than 100000 people
on this slope will eat in the course of next
year 100000 oranges, or 30 oranges a
head This seems liberal allowance, but
when the fruit is cheap it is freely con-
sumed. At present the price per box at
the fruit dealers in the city is 81 so and 81
from three-fourths to one cent per
orange They retail at % and so cents
per dozen, and the grower probably gets
something like 81 box for his crop.
Navel oranges command at the dealers
S. 80 per box, and retail at fancy prices.
OF all branches of horticulture, orange
culture pays the best, if it be faithfully
pursued and the grower has patience to
wait for returns. Three year-old trees can
be bought at quite moderate prices; in nine
years after they are planted they should
bear, and in five years more they should
reach maturity. How much fruit tree
should bear is one of those questions on
which growers differ. Many insist that a
tree is not doing well unless it bears 1000
oranges each season others are satisfied
with an average of LOO, one year with
another. Taking sixty trees to the acre,
counting 600 oranges to the tree, and the
value at the orchard at 81 box, the grower
realizes S. tree, or $500 an acre, which is
more than land in grapes or other fruit or
grain will yield. Yet, curious to say, land
planted in oranges six and seven and ten
years old can be bought for less than $500
an acre in parts of the orange belt at the
south.
The prospect is fair for a wide extension
of that belt At present the chief orange
orchards are at riverside, in San Bernar-
dino county, and at Pasadena and San Ga
briel in Los Angeles. But it has been dis
covered that the orange can be grown quite
successfully in the northern counties-So-
mona, Napa, Butte, Tehama and others.
An exhibition of citrus fruits grown in the
northern counties is to be held next month
at Sacramento, and when it is over, the
fruit, or duplicate thereof, is to be for
warded to Chicago, to be exhibited there.
The northern counties are to be congratu-
lated on the addition of new resource to
the many valuable resources they have al
ready; the more heartily because it is evil
dent that the successful cultivation of citrus
fruits at the north will not impair the su-
premacy which the southern counties have
established in the same branch of horti-
cultures. r. Call.