PART THREE: ORCHARD FRUITS 



CHAPTER XVI 



COMMERCIAL FRUIT VARIETIES 



What fruit to plant, or what kind of a bearing orchard to buy as 

 an investment, are questions which can not be answered, in this 

 treatise. The planters on new land and the investors in improved 

 land must answer them for themselves forming their judgments 

 after securing facts which seem to them a proper basis for such a 

 business decision. It is the conviction of the writer that all fruits 

 which have demonstrated commercial suitability in California, when 

 properly placed under the soil, temperature and moisture conditions 

 which favor their best growth and productiveness, may be counted 

 as yielding nearly equal net returns, considering the investment in 

 land, water, waiting for bearing and handling of the product. So 

 far as the writer has observed, all our commercial fruits have reached 

 maximum and minimum returns during the last quarter of a century 

 which are practically identical. Therefore to plant good fruit in the 

 best place for it, to handle the trees and products most intelligently, 

 both in production and marketing, holds out substantially equal 

 promise of profit. If it could be demonstrated that any particular 

 fruit had the especial advantage over others in net returns, this 

 advantage would immediately disappear because planters would 

 rush to it and take away this advantage by undue increase of its 

 acreage. Therefore the choice of fruits must remain an open ques- 

 tion for each one to determine by his own experience and observa- 

 tion, at least to the extent of determining his own line of production. 



It is one of the purposes of this treatise, as they will be disclosed 

 in succeeding chapters, to impress upon the local planters the con- 

 viction that their clearest path toward satisfactory income lies in 

 choosing varieties which have demonstrated two fundamental char- 

 acters, viz. : adaptation to the locality and to the uses of the fruit 

 trade rather than in choosing novelties, no matter how alluring 

 they may be. 



It may surprise the casual reader to find that our production 

 proceeds so largely upon old standard varieties. Anyone, however, 

 who is acquainted with commercial fruit growing knows that it is 

 neither wise nor easy to revolutionize an established and profitable 

 industry by the substitution of new varieties for the old standards. 

 It takes several years to determine whether a new variety is really 

 trustworthy and suitable, and it takes much longer to get a large 

 acreage in bearing either by grafting or new planting because 

 people are slow and conservative in making changes. As the period 

 of trial of each novelty passes, however, new varieties are accepted, 



