2 - THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 



the company accepted the oltVr of an oil pot agent \vho desired to send 

 us five hundred one-gallon "lard-pail" pots, free of cost, on condition 

 that we give them a thorough trial, and burn in them twenty-four 

 gravity slop distillate. 



In reporting to the gentleman who had sent us the pots, under date 

 of January 20, 1911, we wrote as follows: "On Saturday morning, 

 December 31, 1910, at four o'clock the temperature had fallen to 29 

 degrees in the area where we had the one gallon oil pots distributed 

 one pot per tree. We immediately fired all of the pots, and at the same 

 time fired fifty-six coal baskets per acre on other tracts nearby where 

 the temperature was the same. When th(^ oil pots were lighted, the 

 temperature rose from five to six degrees in less than Hiirty minutes 

 and remained practically stationary till sunrise, while tlie fifty-six 

 coal baskets on the other areas sufficed merely to hold the temperature 

 where it was, allowing considerable ice to form in the leaves and on 

 the surface of the fruit." 



Xot once in twelve years had it been possible to raise the temperature 

 six degrees with the coal baskets. If a one-gallon pot of oil per tree 

 could do it within thirty minutes after lighting, and maintain it* there 

 for four hours, the possibilities of a larger pot and more oil per tree were 

 indeed promising. Still there was the soot question. On four dif- 

 ferent nights that year low temperatures necessitated lighting the five 

 hundred sample oil pots, but so few of the lemons were seriously affected 

 by the soot — possibly because of dry nights followed by winds — that 

 our greatest fear regarding the practicability of the oil pot was, for the 

 time, somewhat dissipated ; so much so, in fact, that with such positive 

 evidence of what we had accomplished and could accomplish with oil 

 in case of an emergency, the entire two hundred acres of orchard com- 

 monly subject to frost visitations, was equipped with ten thousand 

 two-gallon oil pots, one pot to each two trees, in addition to the one 

 coal basket per tree already in use. It was the plan, however, to use 

 the coal under all ordinary conditions, holding the oil in reserve for 

 extremes. You see. we still feared the soot. The coldest ten acre tract 

 was e(|uipped with eighty-four of these two-gallon oil pots per acre, and, 

 to make a more thorough test of the cost, efficiency, and problems con- 

 nected with handling oil, and to satisfy ourselves more fully as to 

 possible damage from soot, we decided to use it. exclusively in protecting 

 this area, which we did successfully although the pots had to be lighted 

 on sixteen different nights. 



So severe were most of the frosts that frequently we were obliged to 

 use the oil. in addition to coal, throughout the other protected areas, 

 as well as where we had planned to use the oil only. On several nights 

 the leaves and fruit were dripping wet with dew, and as the soot 

 accunuilation on the fruit under such conditions is excessive, the spring 

 of 1912 found us with a lot of very soi'did looking lemons indeed. The 

 lowest temperature recorded in the orchard was 23 degrees, lasting but 

 a few minutes, and due to an extremely sudden drop at the very moment 

 when the lighting of the pots was in progress. The eighty-four two- 

 gallon pots per acre within a few minutes raised the mercury to thirty- 

 four degrees, while with the fifty-six oil pots per acre, supplemented 

 with an e(iual number of coal baskets in the other sections of the 

 orchard we easily maintained a temperature of 32 degrees and higher. 

 Except for a little damage to outside rows, the crop was saved. 



