The Daily Missoulian. [volume] (Missoula, Mont.) 1904-1961, 1913-02-11

The recent great freeze in the citrus
fruit districts of California, whereby
some three-fourths of all the oranges
were so badly frozen as to warrant
their exclusion from interstate COM
merce under the pure food laws, came
in spite of the practice which now OBJ
tains in many quarters of smudging
orchards to prevent frost. The test
which will determine the fitness of
California oranges to go upon the
market this cal will be the cutting
into two halves of ang selected at
random from each lot, and If they
reveal more than one-fifth of each
orange to be pulpy and without juice,
they cannot be sold. This law will hit
California very heavily this year, since
the orange is the backbone of the cit
rus fruit industry, as the fruit in
dustry is the backbone of CALIFORNIA;
crop yields. If all the orange trees OF
the state were to be planted in one
grove, with 80 trees to the acre it would
make a great grove a mile wide and
225 miles long. California has more
than $4,000, 600 fruit and u trees,
three-fourths of them in bearing. In
addition to these it has 125, 900, 900
grape vines. There are 10000 bear
ing and 100000 growing orange trees
in the state, with 5000, 900 lemon trees
besides. Last years citrus fruit yield
exceeded 5000, 900 boxes, and brought
nearly $3.50 900 wholesale.
Most orchardists and growers Of
semi-tropical products have learned
that it is a cheap investment to take
precautions to save their crops from
killing frosts. Travelling through the
Ozark region of Missouri, II a
pass thousands of acres of fruit frees,
| and everyone of them will be protected
in frosty weather by crude oil burning
in smudge pots and spreading a heavy
pail of smoke over the orchard :. The
son of one of the leading statesmen Of
the eighties and nineties, a man who
came close to becoming the nominee
of his party for president, had a very
large orchard. One year there vas a
cold wave At an outlay Of some six
thousand dollars for smudging, he
saved his crop of apples and he sold it
for $4,000, while his neighbors who
used no smudges had nc apples. After
that he had plenty of imitators.
But there was one thing in which
they could not initiate him. During
his fathers service in congress he ac-
cumulated a lot of worthless docu-
mentS, most of them congressional
records, and the son found them occu-
plying all the storage room in the
family residence. So he decided that
he would use them for wicks in his
smudge pots; and, furthermore, he
found that congressional hot air."
combined with the smoke of crude pc
troleum made a most excellent pre-
%ventive of frost.
The principle upon which frost pre-
Vention by %snudging is based is that
or AR drainage. Cold air seeks the
low ground just as water seeks the
ocean, and anything hat will help
to drive it out and force it to mix
with other strata of air TENDS to re-
duce the possibility of frost. IN order
to overcome frosts three methods have
been tried out-eXplosions, s%mudging,
and heating. Explosives were first used
in france to protect the grape crop.
Later Albert Stiger. an Austrian bur
gomaster, who owned extensive vine-
yards in the lower slopes Of tn