THE MONTHLY BULLETIN 



FROST PROTECTION IN THE LIMONEIRA LEMON ORCHARDS. 



Address, State Fruit Growers" Couvenliuu. San Jose, Cal., De( emhor 2-4. I'.tlo. 

 By J. D. Cl'Lbertson, Assi.stant Manager Limoneira Company, Santa Paula. Cal. 



Introduction. 



AVliat T sliJiJl say about protecting orchards against frost injury will 

 be nothing more than the story of how this pro])lem has l)een met in the 

 past by tile Limcneira Company of Santa Pauhi anil how we are pre- 

 paring to meet it in the future. Mr. C. C. Teague. vice-president and 

 general manager of the company should have been here to tell this 

 story himself, and most certainly would have been, had not a very 

 important and unexjjected water rate hearing before the State Rail- 

 road Commission demanded liis presence at home. 



No attempt will be made to avoid repeating statements made previ- 

 ously on tin* platform antl in the press by I\Ir. Teague and myself. 

 Our main i)urpose is to give you our experience in a fifteen year strug- 

 gle to save our orchards from frost damage, hoping that someone may 

 profit thereby, just as we have profited. 



Early Frost Fighting. 



Fifteen years ago, the Limcneira Company had one hundred acres 

 of six-year-old lemons frozen to the ground and two hundred acres 

 more frozen back to mere skeh4ons. English walnuts were substituted 

 for the lemons on the one hundred acre tract, but on the two liundred 

 acres where the trees were not hopelessly frozen, steps were taken at 

 once for tlieir protection. Fifty-six coal baskets per acre were installed, 

 each basket holding about twelve pounds of coal. Several years later 

 this e(iuii)iuent was doubled, making one hundred twelve baskets per 

 acre, or one basket to each tree. With this protection serious damage 

 to trees was always averted, but again and again the loss of fruit, both 

 large and small,' was so great that the need of still more and lietter 

 protection was self-evident. 



Beginning of New Era— The Oil Pot. 



The •'Briijuette. " made of compressed shavings and hard asphaltum, 

 was tried experimentally but nmde altogether too much soot, regardless 

 of its possible merits. Several hundred dollars were spent four years 

 ago eiiuippiug five acres Avith the sheet iron sniudge pots for burning 

 the well known loose Avood shavings saturated with heavy crude oil. 

 Selecting a suitable night, a test tiring was made on this five acre tract 

 equipped with these smudge pots, together with another five acres 

 some distance away similarly equipped with coal baskets. Careful 

 thermometer readings, cost estimates and soot factors, all considered 

 together, convinced us that this smudge fuel was not superior to the 

 coal. A year later, in the fall of 1910, impressed by the successful use 

 of the oil pot in the deciduous orchards of Colorado, Oregon and Cali- 

 fornia, and because the introduction of slop distillate for fuel promised 

 a less dense soot and freer burning than that obtained from crude oil, 



