16 CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES. 



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proved tools, while they plod along with hand methods 

 and appliances. If the California farmer should put forth 

 the same effort to adapt conditions to ends and to keep 

 himself at the very front in materials and arts of produc- 

 tion in the growing and selling of vegetables that he has 

 employed in the growing and selling of fruit, we should 

 hear far less of the superiority of the foreigner in the vege- 

 table garden. 



Recent Achievements in Vegetable Growing, Although 

 California horticulturists as a class are charged with ne- 

 glect of vegetable growing, and though it must be admit- 

 ted that the term horticulture and its derivatives are al- 

 most wholly used in California to signify fruit growing, it 

 is an important fact that we have vegetable growers who 

 hold the country's record for volumes and uniqueness of 

 special products. A new phase of the vegetable growing 

 industry of the State arose with the openings of the over- 

 land railways. The Eastern demand for some kind of 

 vegetables has led to their production of several import- 

 ant vegetable crops in very large volume and has thus 

 given us specialty farming in vegetables somewhat com- 

 parable with our great fruit specialties. Along this line 

 vegetable growing has seemed worthy of American effort 

 and our people have been proud to undertake production 

 by the carload or trainload of the very crops which they 

 would scorn to think of growing by the wagonload. The 

 features of this line of production will appear in connec- 

 tion with the discussion of the special kinds of vegetables 

 which are involved in it. 



The statistics of vegetable shipment beyond State lines 

 as given by an expert authority for the years specified is 

 as follows : 



Shipment of Fresh Vegetables by Rail and Sea. (Car- 

 loads of 10 tons each): 1902, 6130; 1903, 7839; 1904, 

 4429; 1905, 5961; 1906, 8982; 1907, 4808; 1908, 9350; 1909, 

 8978. 



The grower for shipment is a specialist; he grows but 

 few kinds, and often one kind only, and it becomes nee- 



