ALMOND CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 331 



blossoms of spring comes the showy almond, a dense mass of 

 white with a " hint of a tint " of pink in it.* 



The cultivation of the almond is easier than of any other tree, 

 unless it be the prune. The orchard is plowed and harrowed once 

 or twice a year, and then the weeds are kept down in any way the 

 farmer chooses. The amount of work required to do this depends 

 on the weather, and is just the same for the almond as for any 

 other tree. But the almond tree, like the prune, is never pruned 

 in this region. Like the prune, the fruit is never thinned on the 

 tree, as the peach and apricot must always be, to produce a crop of 

 good fruit. The heavy pruning and thinning required every 

 year on our peach and apricot trees is a great expense, the thin- 

 ning alone often costing fifty cents a tree, for an average of the 

 whole orchard. Aside from stirring the soil and killing the 

 weeds, a dozen apricot trees take more care and labor than a dozen 

 acres of almonds. This is the consideration that makes almond- 

 growing popular. Equally important is the fact that thus far the 

 almond has no parasites, such as scales, moths, etc., while almost 

 every year adds a new recruit to the insect enemies of other 

 fruits. Our peach-growers are put to the expense of buying cost- 

 ly machines for spraying their trees, and insecticides with which 

 to spray them. Insecticides cost money, and spraying costs time 

 and labor. If the wash is strong enough to kill the scale, it is apt 

 to kill the new wood of the tree a very serious matter in the case 

 of the peach, whose fruit is all on its last year's growth of wood. 

 Still, the spraying must be done every year, and may even be en- 

 forced by law in California. All this trouble and expense are 

 saved to the almond-grower, whose only insect enemy is the red 

 spider, a semi-occasional visitor easily got rid of, and not formid- 

 able if left unhindered in his work. 



First to bloom in the spring, the almond is last to mature in 

 the fall. The whole spring and summer long it hangs there, a 

 green peach for all the world, and after the first few weeks never 

 increasing in size or changing in appearance. The seam is deeper 

 than in most peaches, but not deeper than in the ripe apricot. 

 Late in August this seam will be seen to have opened in a few of 

 the earliest. The grower's anxiety now reaches its climax. Will 

 his almonds open and remain open until harvested, or will the 

 drupe remain closed, or only partially open and then close tight 

 again ? The whole profit of the crop may depend on this ques- 

 tion. It may cost half they are worth to pick and husk them. 



* The writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica combats the ancient tradition that almond 

 blossoms are white. He says they are pink. As I have seen them it is more proper to call 

 them white than pink, though the whitest contain a suggestion of pink, and some varieties 

 show it so plainly as to be distinguishable at considerable distances. 



