98 THE MONTHLY BULLETIN, 



l()n£? attenuated fruit spurs. These are always of poor quality, irregu- 

 lar shape, and disfigured by sun and wind sears. 



The foliage is usually more or less dwarfed, sparse and of poor color. 



Many leafless fruit spurs may be found in all parts of the tree, both 

 inside and out, bearing little or no fruit. 



Cheeking and cracking of the bark of the main trunk often takes 

 place, frequently extending from bud line upward and well out on the 

 main branches. Later this flakes off, exposing a new bark underneath. 

 ]\rany trees appear to be in great distress during this process — a trouble 

 not thoroughly understood, but thought by some to occur earlier on trees 

 that have been consistently heavy producers. 



The above symptoms of decline are given with reference to trees 

 supposedly well cared for in every way, and on first-class soil. A very 

 different class of trees, showing many of the .same symptoms, consists 

 of trees whose inability to produce fruit of quality has been due to : lack 

 of adequate water ; soil impoverished for want of organic matter, result- 

 ing in poor physical condition; lack of nutrition, apparently in most 

 cases because of an inadequate supply of nitrogen in proper form; 

 shallow soil underlaid with sand and gravel, incapable of the capillary 

 power necessary to bring back moisture and soluble plant food that have 

 passed through to lower levels during winter rains and irrigation; loss 

 of part of the root system, through injury or disease, or, perhaps more 

 frequently, a similar loss of bark on the main trunk. 



Mature fruit trees of all kinds belonging to this latter class have long 

 been known to be greatly aided toward profitable production by liberal 

 pruning, even if the other disadvantages are not removed. Indeed, it 

 w^as largely from object lessons obtained by pruning trees with such 

 special disabilities that the conviction came to us that, if heavy pruning 

 Avould so conspicuously improve them, how much more fully might this 

 be realized in a tree not thus handicapped. 



Another matchless object lesson was the heavy freeze of January, 

 1913. A fifteen-acre block of our twenty-year-old trees that had begun 

 to show many of the symptoms of decline was frozen just enough to kill 

 probably 80 per cent of the fruit wood, and many of the larger exposed 

 branches were so injured that the outer portion of the main structure 

 was reduced at least 30 per cent. All cross limbs and unnecessary 

 loaders were removed. It need not be told how these trees ''came back." 

 Nearly every community has been a witness to a similar rejuvenation of 

 at least a few lemon trees of mature years. That year's crop was zero, 

 of course, and even during the second twelve months after the freeze 

 we gathered less than two field boxes per tree, though of superb quality. 

 The third year, however, the crop was 10 per cent above any prior yield, 

 and again of highest quality. The present year promises an even greater 

 production, with quality still unimpaired. 



One more object lesson may be alluded to. Thirty years ago Mr. 

 Nathan W. Blanchard. of Santa Paula, the well known pioneer in lemon 

 growing, was shipping one hundred packed boxes of lemons per acre 

 from an Eureka orchard planted in the '70s. The trees were allowed to 

 grow very much like seedling orange trees until twenty-six or twenty- 

 eight years old. By that time the symptoms of decline, as we know them 

 today, were very evident, both in the orchard and on the balance sheet 

 in the office. Low heading of leiiinu 1rees was being vigorously agitated 

 throughout the lemon growing sections. These considerations led to 



