336 Peach-Growing 



oil is exhausted, and as a result the grower loses not only his 

 fruit crop, but all the cost of the fuel, labor, and energy pre- 

 viously expended in trying to save it. 



While some years ago orchard heating was much exploited 

 and widely practiced, its limitations are more narrow than 

 was at one time believed to be the case. The limitations 

 are economic rather than physical. Given an adequate 

 number of heaters and a sufl&cient supply of oil, the grower 

 can hold a temperature in an orchard above the danger 

 point, under all ordinary conditions in any of the well- 

 defined peach-growing regions. But there has come to be 

 a strong conviction among peach-growers that where it is 

 necessary to heat an orchard often enough to warrant the 

 expense of equipping it for heating, the region or locality is 

 such that some crop other than peaches had better be grown. 

 As a result of this growing conviction, heaters are now rarely 

 used in some regions where a few years ago the practice was 

 very general. 



Another factor in this consideration, or rather the same 

 factor from another standpoint, is the margin of profit in 

 growing and marketing the crop. The peach-grower has 

 not been able in recent years to operate on any assurance of 

 large profits. Hence the added expense of heating, or even 

 of maintaining the investment represented in the equipment, 

 including a reserve supply of oil, has become the economic 

 factor above indicated. 



On the other hand, where a fruit crop is habitually grown 

 and handled on a sufficiently large margin of profit to stand 

 the expense, the equipping of an orchard for heating is 

 practicable. For instance, in one of the lemon-growing 

 districts of California, the management of one of the large 

 companies discarded a supply of ordinary type heaters as 



