CHAPTER XIV 



FERTILIZERS FOR TREES AND VINES 



It was a popular doctrine among early Californians that California 

 soils would never need fertilization, and that there is something in our 

 soil and climate which releases us forever from repaying anything to 

 the ground for the wealth of produce which we take from it. Such a 

 view is, of course, without foundation, and yet it is not difficult to see 

 how it arose. Early attempts to enrich the soil by the turning under 

 of coarse stable manure, as is done in other countries, was undertaken 

 here on light soil in a region rather short of rainfall. The manure did 

 not decompose, and its coarse materials made a soil, already too light 

 to retain moisture well, so open and porous that its moisture was quickly 

 carried away by evaporation, and crops did not grow so well as upon 

 adjacent land which had not been manured. So the fiat went forth 

 against manure. The corrals* became undisturbed guano deposits, and 

 manure piles were fired in dry weather to get the soil poison out of the 

 way. Innumerable tons of bones were gathered and ground in San 

 Francisco and shipped away to countries which need fertilizers. 

 Nature did much to foster the popular delusion, for field crops were 

 gloriously large, and trees and vines grew rampantly and bore fruit the 

 weight of which they were unable to sustain. How could there be more 

 conclusive evidence that manure was a detriment to California soils ? 



A few decades of experience have swept away such fallacies and 

 now California growers, especially those handling citrus fruits, are not 

 only freely investing in commercial fertilizers but are buying and ship- 

 ping considerable distances all available animal manures. They are also 

 untiring students of the art of fertilization and the sciences underlying 

 it. It was in response to their demand that the California Legislature 

 of 1903 passed a fertilizer control law giving the University Agricul- 

 tural Experiment Station regulation of the trade in fertilizing materials. 

 All dealers are required to register and submit samples of their brands 

 and there is constant inspection to detect departures. Semi-annual re- 

 ports are published for public information and these, with special in- 

 structions for taking samples when purchasers desire analyses on their 

 own account, can be had by application to the Experiment Station at 

 Berkeley. The total amount of sales reported under the law for the 

 year ending June 30, 1912, was 50,995 tons. 



It is foreign to our purpose to discuss the general subject of the use 

 of fertilizers in California, and the changes in belief and practice which 

 have recently gained ground. Of course, the marked falling off in the 

 yield of shallow-rooting cereals gave the first unmistakable intimation 

 that there was nothing wrong about the old theory of the perpetual 

 youth of California soils. The lands used for fruit are sometimes slow 

 to show exhaustion, because trees are deep feeders, and the soils, as 

 they are often the very best and deepest of the State, selected for fruit 

 because of that very character, possess, in an eminent degree lasting 



*Inclosures for livestock of any kind. 



140 



