The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1899-02-24
ORANGE GROWING IN CALIFOR-
MA,
The Vigilance it Requires-No outdoor
Pursuit More Fascina ting, Howev-

| er.
In no horticultural industry perhaps
Is eternal vigilance quite 80 much the
price of success as in orange growing.
From the hour the land for the orange
groves is chosen there is a round of dali
ly duties that no other agriculturalist
knows. The first problem the orange
grower must grapple with is met when
he comes to select his trees. The sue
cess of a grove depends as much upon
the quality of the trees as on anything
else The orange nurserymen have
sometimes one hundred and forty thou
sand young trees ready for planting.
An orange tree ready for the orchard is
about thirty inches high. It's roots are
usually three years old, and the trunk,
which has grown from q bud on lemon
tree stock and roots, is a year old.
Nowadays good stock navel orange
trees may be had for ten cents each.
Ten years ago the same class of trees
readily brought $3.50 and $1.75 each, and
for several years the growers paid one
dollar each in the nursery. 1t takes
a hundred trees to to plant an acre.
The main cause of worry in planting
|
not true to name. There is no way of
ascertaining this in young trees; the
fruit alone tells the story. With the
planting of the one or two thousand
trees the grove begins. The grove has
now cost from $275 to $500 an acre. The
cost depends upon the location of the
property, the value of the water-right.
and the expense of clearing and grading
the land. The average cost nowadays
is three hundred dollars an acre.
| While the grower reads at night gov
eminent agricultural reports on the care
of an orange grove, and California hor-
ticultural documents on soil, phoS-
pilates, irrigation, ETC., and figures on
prospective profits, he will have from
the first a ceaseless round of daily work
among the trees. Horticulturists say
there is scarcely anything in their field
Of labor that resents neglect so much
and responds to care and attention so
quickly as orange or lemon trees. The
orange grower who would leave his
grove to grow to grass and without
blowing and cultivation for a dozen
years at time, as the Old -fashioned
eastern apple-growers generally do,
would never have one box of oranges fit
for marketing. From the first week of
the groves existence it must be pre-
pared for irriga ton every thirty days
for nine months in the year. This in
wolves the blowing of burrows, trench
ing and forming a basin about each
trees. Then the water runs for twelve
and sometimes twenty hours at time,
and the hardest of manual workers get
thoroughly tired out in a twenty-hour
siege of irrigating. A good job of irri-
cation in ten-acre tract keeps two men
busy with hoes and shovels.
When the water has sunk into the
ground there comes the cultivation.
Not a weed is allowed to start up. No
stones larger than ones fist are permit
ted to remain, and few of those The
soil is always kept soft and pulveriZed.
The trees are watched for any indica-
tions that too much or too little irriga-
ton is applied There are sucker shoots
to be removed, ungainly limbs to be cut
away, and lacerated bark to be salved
and bandaged. Once a year the trees
must be pruned, and when the young
hortculturist comes to get advice on
pruning his grove, he will be astonished
to know there are so many ideas about
it. Some men have written big books on
the subject, and still they have appa-
rently only touched on it,
When the trees are about three years
old fertilizing begins. The ambitious
grower will have an analysis made of
the soil in his grove, and then after long
study of the agricultural and horticul-
nrtes \ will hot II
of commercial phosphates is best adapt
ed to remedying the deficit of nourish-
ment Phosphating is heavily done in
the older groves. With the stuff worth
forty dollars ton it is easy to put fifty
dollars worth on an acre of orange land. |
When the harvest season comes, be-
tween January and May, the grower
must keep an eye on his grove more
closely than ever. Oranges that remain |
on the trees too long become puffy and |
The fruit is not picked |
like apples, peaches and plums-that is, |
all at one time The piclSers go over
grove a half-dozen times, selecting the
ripe oranges. The color determines the |
ripeness to the practiced eye. Truly, if |
vigilance was ever the pr ce of success in
any employment, it is in growing or
anges for market in these days.
A common expression among the
California orange growers is
that nineteen enemies beset an orange
Tree. The orange growers in Florida
Used to say they had forty The one all
important and irresistible enemy is
'rost. In this land of irrigation there
ire none of the fears of drouth. Some
lines there is partial shortage of
water, but the Development of subter
anean streams in the foothills in the
asst decade has given the growers sup
,lies that they did not dream of before.
Insect pests were formerly a dread of
very orange-grower. They must still
lot now so dreadful. They will kill the
most vigorous trees, but Yankee inven-
ion has shown how to keep the pests
lown. The most serious parasite is the
ottony cushion white scale. It multi
lies by the myriad in few days, and |
covers trunks, branches and twigs Of
range trees, where it saps the life out.
Dozens of orange growers lost their all
" it's ravages until the government
rocured little red lady-bugs (known as
-edalia cardnalis) from Australia, and
ct them to work feeding on the white
Gale parasite That nightmare among
orticulturists then vanished. Then !
here are red, San Jose, brown, black
nd ~ how 500 la nara Citac which flourish /