CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



Growing Olives from Seed. The olives should not be planted 

 with the pulp, but cleaned of this either by letting them rot in a pile 

 or by putting them into an alkaline solution to cut the oil. A simple 

 way to hasten germination is to break the pits, taking care not to 

 hurt the germ. An instrument similar to the nut-cracker has been 

 invented in France which is said to work well. When the kernels 

 are deprived of their shell, they may be kept moist in a compost, or 

 mixture of cow-dung and sandy soil, and sow thickly in the month 

 of April. If it is thought to be too much work to take the kernels 

 out of the pits, they must be soaked for twenty-four hours in a 

 solution of one-half pound of concentrated lye to the gallon of 

 water. Most of the seeds sprout the first year. Planting the naked 

 kernels gives the quickest result. Without using this artificial 

 means some of the seeds may remain dormant at least for two years. 

 Clipping the tip of the shell, so as to open a small aperture so that 

 moisture can enter readily, will often cause nine-tenths of the seed 

 to grow within three months. 



G. P. Hall, of San Diego, gives the following hints for those who 

 desire to experiment with seedling olives : 



After the pulp has all been taken off with lye water (in order to remove 

 all the oil and to roughen the shell), the seed is washed in clean water and 

 then kept in moist sand till planting time, which is in February and March. 

 They will not all germinate the first year, so it is best to preserve the seed- 

 bed. Some assist the germination by cracking the pits in an iron vise; one 

 turn of the screw generally splits the shell. Leave the pit in the cracked 

 shell when you plant in the prepared seed-bed. Some use boxes perforated 

 to insure drainage; the boxes are filled up to within three inches of the 

 top with good sandy loam, then the kernels, cracked or otherwise, are 

 spread over the top and in inch or more of sand covers the whole, which 

 must be kept constantly moist. The cracking of the kernels greatly ac- 

 celerates the germination, and a person can prepare 600 or more seed in 

 a day. Take seed from best trees and avoid dwarfs of any kind. Use any 

 good kinds of either pickling or oil olives as you may desire. 



Large Cuttings. There are two chief methods of propagating 

 the olive from cuttings now practised in California. One uses well- 

 matured wood, and the other young wood which has just passed out 

 of the herbaceous state. Practice with hard wood proceeds by 

 taking cuttings of sound wood about a foot long and one-half to 

 one inch in diameter, and rooting them as already described for 

 vine cuttings, in Chapter XXVI. A fresh cut should be made at 

 the bottom of the cutting and if the bark has shriveled at all the 

 cuttings should be put in water for a time before planting. These 

 large cuttings sometimes remain dormant for a year or more, and 

 recent propagation has been largely by the small-cutting method. 



Small Cuttings. Propagating by small cuttings serves an ex- 

 cellent purpose in rapid multiplication; it enables the grower to 

 handle a large number of plants in a small space, and the plants 

 from small cuttings have a symmetrical root system quite resem- 

 bling that from a seed. These cuttings are made from very small 

 shoots and both the tips and the lower cuts are used. In the en- 

 graving the figure on the left is a tip cutting; the next, a cutting 

 lower down the shoot. These figures are about natural size, and 



