PIONEER EXPERIENCES IN FRUIT GROWING 49 



ers in the San Jose district before 1860. In fact, the descriptions of 

 orchard management in that day include nearly all the methods 

 which have since prevailed. Later experience has, however, shown 

 that irrigation facilities are more valuable even for deciduous fruits 

 than was once thought possible. This proposition will be discussed 

 in the chapter on irrigation. As for the policy of clean cultivation 

 for the whole year, it also has been succeeded by a more rational 

 policy of cover cropping which will be discussed in the chapters on 

 cultivation and fertilization. 



Early Wisdom and Enterprise. It is evident to anyone who 

 studies the records, that California was very fortunate in numbering 

 among the early settlers so many men with horticultural tastes, skill, 

 and experience. The rapidity with which fruit trees were multiplied, 

 and the confidence with which these early comers entered upon the 

 nursery business, shows their training. Although there were many 

 trees brought here from the East and from Europe, they constituted 

 only a small percentage of the plantings of the first few years; 

 but the orchards, with the exception of a very small number of trees 

 introduced to furnish grafting and budding stock, were the product 

 of the soil. When this is borne in mind, it becomes all the more 

 wonderful how so much could be done in a new country, in a distant 

 part of the world, in so very short a time. It was an observation 

 which was put upon record as early as 1856, that "some varieties of 

 fruit are much improved by change to this State, and some are not 

 benefited." The test seems to have been that if a variety was not 

 better than at the East, it should be discarded. 



The First Oversupply. The wonderful stimulus given to the 

 fruit interest by the results obtained in growth and in marketing, 

 soon induced larger plantings than the demand warranted. In 1857 

 it was publicly stated that "there are single farms in this State con- 

 taining each over half a million fruit trees in orchard and nursery 

 one person owning enough trees, when fully matured, to produce as 

 much fruit, other than grapes, as will be sold this year throughout 

 our State. The day is not far distant when fruit will be an impor- 

 tant crop for raising and fattening swine." This was, to a certain 

 extent, a statement of a croaker, for plantation continued, rare va- 

 rieties were brought from the East, the South, and from Europe; 

 the growth of some fruits continued to be very profitable and the 

 nursery business, confined to fewer hands, was profitable also. The 

 idea that quality rather than size should be striven for led to more 

 discrimination in propagation and better treatment of trees. 



The decade from 1858 to 1868 was one of quiet in the fruit in- 

 terest of California. Many of the too hastily and carelessly planted 

 trees died from lack of proper cultivation and pruning, and the 

 borer wrought sad havoc. In 1860 and 1861 there was serious de- 

 pression. It is recorded that peaches were worth but one cent a 

 pound, and many were allowed to go to waste as not worth gather- 

 ing. The flood of 1862 destroyed many trees along the Sacramento 

 River, and replanting was slow until prices began to improve, as 

 they did soon afterward. The rapid development of the mining in- 



