192 REPORT OF STATE BOARD OF HORTICULTURE. 



It usually requires from six to eight years to bring a good prune tree into 

 good bearing, and in many cases, where the roots have only shallow soils 

 from which to gather food, they will have the available food consumed 

 shortly after coming into bearing, and the fruit production begins to fail. 

 The orchardist, after spending years of care, toil, and expense, struggles 

 then to overcome inevetable results, and finally gives up the task and pro- 

 nounces i^rune growing a failure, while the true cause of his failure was his 

 primary mistake of selecting improper soil or bad physical soil conditions. 



The greatest prune-growing section in the world, the Santa Clara district 

 in California, where trees grow to great size and at thirty years of age con- 

 tinue to produce excellent fruit at a fair profit, has such depth of soil that 

 the roots of the trees continue to increase in depth and find available ele- 

 ments for tree and frnit many feet below the surface. It is this great depth 

 of soil and available elements of food that gives the value of $700 and more 

 l)er acre to the best prune orchards of Santa Clara Valley. A ten-foot 

 augur should be used in boring the soil to determine the conditions before 

 planting an orchard. 



Many of our inferior orchards were planted in Oregon at a time when 

 prunes were bringing ten and twelve cents per pound, and men were led to 

 believe that the world would take all the prunes that Oregon could ever pro- 

 duce at these prices. Hundreds of these orchards that have been profitable 

 at high prices, are failing because the available soil has been exhausted and 

 the fruit has become inferior, the price has been coming down, and we are 

 having the cry of overproduction and that prune growing is a falure in Ore- 

 gon. Prune growing is not a failure in Oregon, and, in my opinion, never 

 will be, although prune growers are failing, and will continue to fail by the 

 hundreds for years to come. Hundreds of men have failed in the sawmill 

 business in Oregon, and hundreds more will fail in the future, but lumbering 

 in Oregon is not a failure. 



Why will prune growing continue to be a success in Oregon":* First, the 

 consumption of Oregon prunes is increasing at a rapid rate. Its food value, 

 at the cost it can be given to the consumer, is such as to fix it permanently 

 in the diet of the great mass of American people. I do not hesitate to make 

 the statement that there is no fruit of equal food value with the Oregon 

 prune that can be produced at as low a cost. If this proposition i^ true, its 

 future is assured. 



COST OF PRODUCTION. 



Many orchardists are finding it unprofitable to produce prunes at five 

 cents per pound, and are failures on that account. The Italian prune, the 

 principal prune in Oregon, is grown in large quantities throughout the Wil- 

 lamette and Umpqua valleys, and to a limited extent in Rogue River Valley. 

 Marion County produced more than any other county in 1898. This prune 

 can be grown successfully in almost every section of Western Oregon. In 

 the Willamette Valley the cold, wet springs sometimes interfere with the 

 forming of the fruit, and sometimes causes a failure of the croj). The Ump- 

 qua Valley so far has proved to be the section where the crop is the most 

 regular, although many of the orchai-ds in that valley failed in 189i). The 



