192 KESOURCES OF CALIFORNIA. 



two-thirds of them being in the orchard of William Wolfskill, 

 in the town of Los Angeles. About four hundred of the 

 orange-trees in the state are old— from ten to fifty years of 

 age ; the remainder are joxmg, from six to eight years old, at 

 which age they begin to come into bearing. 



The proper way to raise orange-trees is to make a bed about 

 three feet wide and twenty long, with the earth in it well pul- 

 verized ; and in January or February plant this bed with seeds, 

 in rows a foot apart, and the seeds six inches apart in the rows, 

 and about six inches deep. The bed should be weeded care- 

 fully, and kept constantly moist. If in the dry sand of Los 

 Angeles county, the bed should be irrigated once a week. At 

 the end of three years the trees will be four feet high and an 

 inch and a half thick in the trunk. They should then be set 

 out in the orchard where they are to stand, and be planted 

 twenty-five or thirty feet apart each way. The transplanting 

 should be done in any of the spring months, the earher the 

 better, and should be immediately followed by irrigation. The 

 transplanting should not take place when the young trees are 

 growing, and therefore the trees should not be irrigated be- 

 fore transplanting, especially if the weather be warm; for 

 warmth and irrigation would have a tendency to start the 



shoots. 



The trees begin to bear in their seventh year, when they are 

 about ten feet high, and the trunks from three to five inches 

 thick. At fourteen years they are in full bearing, and they 

 continue to bear till they are at least fifty years of age, proba- 

 bly much longer. In full bearing, every tree will produce at 

 least one thousand oranges a j^ear, and some trees will regu- 

 larly produce two or three thousand. The tree grows to be 

 thirty feet high, the top spreading out- thirty feet wide. It 

 blossoms early in the spring, and the fruit is ripe in the follow- 

 ing February, although it looks ripe in December. The or- 

 anges will keep well until May, if left on the tree. The fruit 

 is always in demand, and always commands a high price; and 

 previous to 1857, Mr. Wolfskill made more than one hundred 



