The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1918-06-10
The Wonderful
Story OF Florida

ers might expect to harvest an av-
erage Of two boxes of fruit per tree,
with an increase of one box year
thereafter. Culls and dropped fruit,
formerly thrown away, now find a
market, the pulp being used for mar
malade and the juice for bottling. |
noticed advertisements in local pa
pers offering so cents per 100 pounds
for sound drop and Gull grapefruit"
Signs in the packing houses notify
growers that every doubtful orange
is a GULL"
The orange tree is remarkable. The
visitor is astonished to find blossoms
on one branch of an orange tree and
fully ripened fruit on another. Ma
ture is a wonder-worker She makes
no mistakes She can be neither
fooled nor bribed A grower tells
me that an orange tree blossoms in
February and in June. If in Febru-
airy the developed fruit shows less
than the average yield, the tree puts
forth additional blossoms in June and
this counterbalances the loss, but if
fruit is fully up to the average, no
blossoms appear in June. There is
no more beautiful sight than fine
orange grove bearing fruit and bios.
SONS concurrently. The appeal Of
the golden fruit is to the palate, of
the snowy blossoms to the eye, and
the fragrance to the sense of smell
One can we'll imagine an endless brid-
al procession amid a grove Of or.
ange blossoms with tuneful hooking
birds forestalling the wedding march
Given the opportunity. most Of us
would prefer to 60 to Florida to be
married.
New York, Boston, Philadelphia
and in fact all largest cities get the
benefit of Florida's semi-tropical eli.
mate. From Tampa to Jacksonville,
citrus orchards and truck-farms in.
Vulnerable can be seen. and their
products are usually destined for
New York as center of distribution
The Wall Street Journal estimates
that $1,2O0,OO0 is spent for food on
gay Broadway nightly and that It
takes twenty-One trainloads to bring
food to the ten million people clus.
tered over thirty-mile radius around
New York Harbor. I have no doubt
this is a fair estimate for know that
enc OF the most popular of the newest
hotels in New York City took in over
$2,O0O,OOO in its restaurants last wear.
and this is only one of many large no.
tells in the city.
New York's food supply used to be
drawn from the States of New York
New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Now
1t comes from every State in the I'm.
ion. Milk trains for New Yorks
breakfast start out the night before
from as far north as the Canadian line
ana as far from any other direction
as sweet milk can be carried without
FISK. What Florida is doing to sup.
ply the New York consumer NAV he
inferred from the fact that two con.
Germs at Key West from December LIST
to February Goth last shipped four
million pounds of fish-mostly king.
nsh, Spanish mackerel and red SNAP.
pers-to northern markets. Over
10000 pounds of crawfish-"Key
West lobsters"-helped to meet the
VOID during the period when lack of
transportation embargoed the Boston
lobster market. The Tampa Tribune
prints "a daily report of the fruit and
vegetable shipments from Florida"
In one day, March 18th, this showed
the following number of carloads:
10, oranges 30, lettuce 16.
tomatoes 16, celery II, cabbage ST.
and strawberries 4. 1t is stated that
these were shipped via all rail from
Jacksonville, High Springs and Hamp.
ton"
Is it surprising. considering present
prices, that the tide of settlers is
more and more turning southwark
md especially to Florida, which ships
over tweny million crates of garden
truck and fruit to the North every
year? At Barlow, | saw enormous
truck farms, irrigated from overhead
by system of perforated pipes fed
from water tank. The rich, black
muck of this region produces the fin.
est cabbage, lettuce, strawberries
turnips, cauliflowers and radishes. AT
Sanford thousands of acres are in