The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-08-21
THE CALIFORNIA RANCHES,
Lemon-GroWers Seem to Be
Exalting Over Producers
of the Orange.
PROFITS IN GARDEN TRUCK.
Peach Crop Round Selma-The In
creasing Demand for Nour-
ing Fruit.
PROFITS IN GARDEN TRUCK

The Department of Agriculture at Wash
ington has received samples of corn from
Peru with grains four times the size of the
ordinary kind. 1t is very prolific and
bears very large ears. The species is dis
tinct from any known in North America,
and the name ''tea amylacea" has been
given to it.
A resident on Bank street, in this city,
says the Grass Valley Tidings finds that
his house is being made hive OF industry.
A swarm of bees alighted on his woodpile,
and since then the industrious insects have
begun storing up honey in the walls of his
cabin between the weather boarding and
the ceiling. They enter by cavity be-
meath the Dashboard, and come and go just
as they would were it veritable beehive.
The orange seems to be taking back
seat to the lemon as Southern California
product for market. A number of the
oldest orchardists in this section. says the
National City Record, are cutting out
orange stock and budding to lemon, SO I'M
profitable seems the former fruit and the
outlook appearing so promising for the
latter. The cured product is not so easily
obtainable. Lemon growers are for the
present on the top of the market and are
proportionately happy.
J. M. Moss, who has a ranch mile or
two south of town, is selling some peaches
which are about as near perfect as such
fruit can be, says the Bakersfield Callfor-
MAN. They are OF the Muir variety, and
are large. fine looking and luscious. Many
of them average fourteen ounces to pound
in weight The trees which produce this
fruit were only planted two years ago this
spring, yet from some 300 OF them he will
gather upward of five tons of choice fruit.
Some of the trees actually measure 81
inches in circumference at foot or two
from the ground, and all are fine examples
of growth. Mr.. Moss believes in thorough
cultivation, aided by irrigation, and the
result is that he has model orchard, just
as the fruit he is selling Is model of what
it should be.
J. NJ. Main, whose place is about seven
miles out on the Los Gatos road, thinks he
has no reason to complain of his condition
this season, says the San Jose Mercury.
He has fifteen acres, on which he has 1000
vines, while the remainder is planted to
prunes peaches and apricots. From sixty
apricot trees he got six tons of fruit, being
an average of 200 pounds to the tree. He
sold them for $50 per ton, which brought
acre. He sold his prunes for $50 per ton
and is drying his peaches. Mr.. Main is
one of the many who have found fruit
growing profitable. Twelve years ago he
went into that neighborhood with only $40
in his possession. From the proceeds of
his fifteen acres he has paid for the place,
put up his buildings and made living for
himself and family.
It does seem pity that the famed Ore
gon apple of fifteen years ago. through
neglect and careless methods, has been al
lowed to deteriorate until, where once it
was in demand throughout the entire
| West, now but small home consumption
is found for it. In this, reference is made
to the old orchards, the orchards which
less than ten years ago were the pride of
the State. These trees have become so in
| fected with the codling moth and other
pests that it were better they be destroyed
and the orchards replanted with new
thrifty varieties. Then with the old-time
orchardists giving to the trees such cul-
ture and care as demanded in the present
status of the fruit-growing industry, where
everything must be of the best to compete
bountiful soil of this State Oregon apples
will have regained their prestige.-Port-
land Oregonlan.
Ben Calvert was in town the other morn
ing with wagon load of the finest vegeta-
bles we ever saw, consisting of cucumbers,
tomatoes, string beans, onions, ETC., says
the Willows Journal. Mr.. Calvert has
been working on ranches around Willows
for number of years until last winter,
when he purchased ten acres of land from
?. r. Garnett and at once commenced pre-
pairing the land for gardening. He put up
windmill and planted all kinds of garden
Seeds trees and vines. and has been sell
ing vegetables all season. Mr.. Calvert says
he will make more money on his ten acres
this year than he ever did by working for
wages. He says if he had water to irrigate
with he would not give his ten acres for
300-acre wheat ranch. Mr.. Calvert claims
that with water ten acres will support a
large family and when Central canal is
completed, he says, wheat farming will be
thing of the past.
There is an immense crop of peaches in
this vicinity, says the Selma Enterprise.
Selma is indeed the center of the peach
belt of the State. The crop never fails
here. In other portions of the State and
throughout the United States the crop is
short one, in many sections an entire
failure. Mr.. Brown on the Mccall road
sold the crop on his 14-acre orchard for
$1700, and is repenting it. Roy Baird is
drying the crop on the Cutler orchard on
shares and is in clover. Ed Butts paid
good lump of hard gold for thirty acres
of the Walker ranch and will get back half
the money this year. The Gartenlaub
orchard, which returned between $4,000 and
$1,000 to Mr.. Gartenlaub last season. is
making bigger return this season. Now
let the producers remember that the peach
crop of the United States is short, and that
so far as can be learned from exchanges,
this immediate section is the only part of
the State where the crop is abundant.
1t is strange that the growing of tea has
not been the subject OF more experimental
tion in this country, for there are sections
in which the climate must be right, and
the price is such as to encourage the hope
of large returns, observes the Oakland En-
quirer. Coffee and tea culture seem to be
at present the most profitable branches of
agriculture in the whole world, and while
coffee is the crop on which Mexico is
building up new prosperity, the tea bust
ness is proving very profitable in India.
One of the incorporated tea-growing con-
Germs in that country recently paid divi-
dend of 80 per cent, showing how much
money there must be in it. Tea has been
grown in California as an amusement by
amateurs, but in South Carolina there is
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