184 RESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



throughout the year. Another advantage of our climate is, 

 that garden vegetables may be left in the ground all winter. 

 Potatoes are sometimes not dug until the first of January, and 

 turnips and beets are usually left in their beds until they are 

 to be sent to market ; there is never enough cold to freeze 

 them. Potatoes are never buried, but after they are dug are 

 piled up in bags under a shed, or are placed in a storehouse, 



The cabbage likes a moist air and soil, and thrives best along 

 the coast, from Bodega to Santa Cruz. The melons and toma- 

 toes like a warm climate, and thrive best in the Sacramento 

 valley — and Putah valley, which is tributary to it — where 

 many of the early vegetables for the San Francisco market are 

 grown. 



§ 144. Fruit. — As a fruit-growing state, California takes a 

 high position. In this particular, as in so many others, her 

 .climate gives her great advantages. In no part of the world 

 do fruit-trees grow so rapidly, bear so early, so regularly, and 

 so abundantly, and produce fruit of such large size. Nor is 

 there any other country where so great a variety of fruit can 

 be produced in high excellence. In the matter of flavor, our 

 apples, peaches, and strawberries, or most of them, are infe- 

 rior to Eastern fruit ; in the flavor of other species we are at 

 least equal to other countries. The pear, the plum, the apri- 

 cot, the grape, and the olive, are peculiarly thrifty, healthy, 

 and productive, as compared with the same kinds of fruit else- 

 where. 



The Californian orchards are trained low, the lower limbs 

 being within a foot or at most two feet of the ground. All 

 kinds of fruit-trees are trained on the same principle. Men, 

 therefore, do not walk under the trees in an orchard, or climb 

 after the fruit. It would be as absurd to try to walk under or 

 to climb a bearing apple-tree in California as to w^alk under or 

 climb a gooseberry-bush. One fruit-tree in a hundred may be 

 trained high, not more. The advantages of low training are, 

 that the trees bear fruit earlier — a matter of the greatest im- 

 portance in California, where the interest of money is so high, 



