Sketch of Fkuit-Growing in Pacific Northwest. 177 



The horticulture of the Coast Region has five sriking features, — the growing 

 of prunes, cherries, small fruits, bulbs and seeds. Each of these will be con- 

 sidered briefly. Bulbs and seeds, while not pomological subjects, are such interest- 

 ing features of Coast Region horticulture that I shall call attention to them 

 here. 



1. Prunes. There are now about thirty thousand acres of prunes in Wash- 

 ington, and thirty thousand acres in Oregon. The output of dried prunes from 

 the Northwest in 1001 was 24,000,000 pounds, which returned over $1,000,000 to the 

 growers. The acreage of prunes is still increasing. About half of the prune 

 area of the Northwest is in the Coast Region, and half in the Inland Valleys, but 

 by far the greater part of the dried product comes from Coast Region orchards. 

 The inland growers market most of their prunes as fresh fruit. As in California, 

 prunes generally do best near the coast or along the river valleys, where the warm 

 ocean fogs reach inland. The valleys of the Columbia and its tributaries, also of 

 the Rogue and Umpqua Rivers are the chief prune districts of the Northwest. It 

 is a crop which requires special care in selecting a site for the orchard. 



The Italian is the chief variety of prune grown in the Northwest. French, 

 Silver and Hungarian are grown to a slight and decreasing extent for drying, but 

 the latter two are more popular for shipping green. The French or Agen, which is- 

 the chief variety in California orchards, is here almost worthless for drying. Un- 

 less the trees are heavily thinned, which is too expensive an operation at present 

 prices, French prunes are of very small size. The Italian has several advantages 

 over other varieties. Under fair culture it is of large size. It never over-loads' 

 and very rarely requires propping or thinning. It is also a tart prune, and there 

 are many who prefer the tart, appetizing flavor of an Italian to the rather insipid 

 sweetness of the California French prune. It is the larger size and superior qual- 

 ity of northwestern prunes which enable them to compete with California 

 prunes, which can be put on the market more cheaply because they are mostly 

 dried in the sun ; not in expensive evaporators, as in the Northwest. 



The Italian prune, however, has several disadvantages. It has numerous 

 constitutional and fungous troubles. It is also an early bloomer, and the blossoms 

 are often cut off by the frost. The making of smudges for protecting fruit blossoms 

 from frost has been practiced by northwestern fruit-growers with considerable 

 success. Wet straw, or strawy manure is the material chiefly used. The tem- 

 perature in an orchard is often raised six degrees on a frosty night by rolling a 

 dense cloud of wet smoke from the smudge piles over it. Smudging is successful 

 only on comparatively level land. On slopes the smoke drifts away too quickly. 

 It is altogether probable that very soon the prune-grcwers in many parts of the 

 Northwest will be organized for co-operative smudging, and that whole districts 

 will be enveloped in the protecting cloud on frosty nights. Many northwestern 

 prune-growers are now confident that the Sugar prune, originated by Luther Bur- 

 bank, will meet their need of a prune which ripens several weeks earlier than 

 Italian, so that the drying season may be extended. 



Like every other industry in the Northwest, prune growing has had its boom 

 days, but those are over. Eastern men who went there some years ago with 

 dreams of .$1,000 per acre profits, are now as wise as those who went to California 

 expecting to reap a fortune from a few acres of lemons. There is no fortune in 

 prune-growing when prunes return the grower 3 to 5 cents a pound ; but there is a 

 good income in it for the man who knows the business. An eight-year old tree 

 should bear 30 pounds of dried fruit, and it costs H/^ cents a pound to handle 

 it. The grower should get at least from $40 to $50 net profit per acre, and the 

 average is somewhat higher. There are many eastern fruitgrowers who average 

 $150 per acre from their apple orchards. I believe that the opportunities for 

 making money in fruit-growing are greater in the East than in the Northwest, 

 providing the same degree of intelligence and energy is shown in both cases. 



The prevailing low prices of prunes have driven some growers out of the 

 business, and have set the rest hustling for broader markets at home, in Europe 



HOR. 12 



