A" " " 



10* "c* . -CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



white : 'gro Wing, * thirteen > feet and six inches around its body. The weight is 

 not known. A beet grown by Mr. Isaac Brannan, at San Jose, weighed 

 sixty-three pounds; carrots three feet in length, weighed forty pounds. At 

 Stockton a turnip weighed one hundred pounds, and at a dinner for twelve 

 persons, of a single potato, larger than the size of an ordinary hat, all par- 

 took, leaving at least the half untouched. 1 



These statements are vouched for by twelve persons whose 

 names are given. To save the respect of their eastern friends and 

 at the same time to loyally make known the horticultural glory of 

 the land they had found, the early vegetable growers had recourse 

 to public exhibitions. The first was held in the fall of 1851 in San 

 Francisco. The exhibits did not quite equal the verdict of the 

 horticultural jury cited above but they were notable, e. g. : a red 

 beet from San Jose, twenty-eight inches in circumference, weight 

 forty-seven pounds; beets two months from seed in San Francisco, 

 six and seven pounds ; cabbage from Mission San Jose seven feet 

 in circumference, weight, fifty-six pounds; cucumbers eighteen 

 inches in length ; onions five, six and seven inches in diameter from 

 a product of nearly seventy thousand pounds to the acre; potatoes 

 from Santa Cruz, one hundred and twenty-five pounds from the five 

 vines of a single hill and one potato from Santa Clara thirteen 

 inches in length, weighing seven and a quarter pounds ; pumpkins 

 and squashes from one hundred to one hundred and forty pounds 

 each. 



The demonstrations furnished by such public exhibitions, of 

 which there were several in the early years of San Francisco, were 

 accepted at the east, and even such conservative experts as the late 

 Dr. Warder of Ohio were led to exclaim, as early as 1852: "truly 

 this is a wonderful country." 2 To fully appreciate the significance 

 of the facts it must be remembered that the varieties were those of 

 nearly half a century ago and the culture was wholly lacking in the 

 intensive arts which are common property of vegetable growers of 

 the present day. The immensity of the specimens and of the crop, 

 wonderful to the grower and incredible to the distant hearer, was 

 simply the exponent of the capacity of a virgin soil, in which 

 fertility had been accumulating for ages, and the forcing power of 

 a climate wholly new to Americans. In later years California has 

 surpassed even these early standards through the employment of 



'Rep. of the Com. of Patents for 1851 : Part II, p. 4. 

 2 Western Hort. Review, Feb., 1852. 



