202 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



FRUIT GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 



Red Bluff, Tehama County, California, ) 



January 30, 1888. j 



Edwin F. Smith, Secretary State Board of Agriculture: 



Dear Sir: At your request I venture to give a few hints on fruit culture 

 in California, designed especially to aid new beginners coming from the 

 East, as well as those of our own people who have not heretofore considered 

 the matter from a practical standpoint, but are now beginning to plant. 



Considering the importance of the industry and its rapid increase, and 

 further, that the conditions of climate here render the books written from 

 the standpoint of the Atlantic Coast a very imperfect guide, it is astonish- 

 ing that no one has given us in consecutive form, by pamphlet, book, or 

 otherwise, a treatise on fruit growing in this State. 



Very full information may now be had at the bookstores upon the growing 

 of citrus fruits, the olive, and the grape, but beyond this I can find nothing. 

 As to the large and profitable class of deciduous fruits, always, in my judg- 

 ment, to be the most remunerative of our fruit products, and producing 

 the greatest wealth to the State, not including the grape for wine and 

 raisins, we must grope through fugitive articles in the papers, in agricultu- 

 ral journals, and the reports of the Horticultural Society. A book has 

 been promised us for two years covering the whole field, but the difficulties 

 in the way of satisfactory treatment have left us still to such guides as 

 experience gives, and as may be gleaned from the sources named. This 

 lack of sources of knowledge within reach is my only apology for attempt- 

 ing to instruct any one in so important a matter. For information as to 

 citrus fruit growing, the olive and grape culture in all its forms and for all 

 purposes, I refer the intending planter to published works, and to the re- 

 ports of the State Viticultural Society, written wholly from the California 

 standpoint, and giving a full and satisfactory treatment of these subjects. 



PLAN OF ORCHARD. 



It is usual to plant in form of a square. I plant in triangular form of 

 figure. By this method you get about 15 per cent more trees to the acre, 

 and each tree is equidistant from its neighbor. At twenty feet apart, by 

 the square system, you get one hundred and eight trees to the acre; by the 

 triangular, one hundred and twenty-six. A simple and easy way to lay 

 off an orchard by this plan is this: Take three strips of lumber, one inch 

 thick and three or four inches wide, and of length, a foot or two longer 

 than you wish your trees apart. Make a triangle. Bore holes -at the 

 angles, each the number of feet apart from the other you wish your trees. 

 Lay off one row of your orchard on the side of the plat to be planted. 

 Drive small stakes the distance apart of the holes in your triangle. Set 

 one side of your triangle over two of these pegs, and stick a peg in the 

 other hole. Lift off and move along and set over the next pegs on the base 

 line and stick a peg in the hole as before, and so on across the plat. You 



