CHAPTER I. 



VEGETABLE GROWING IN 

 CALIFORNIA. 



Though California enjoys world-wide fame for fruits it is an 

 interesting fact that the state first won horticultural recognition 

 upon achievements in vegetable growing. Garden seeds were more 

 easily transported than trees and formed a part of the scant bag- 

 gage of many gold-seekers. Seeds were also freely sent by home 

 friends or quickly obtained on orders to eastern dealers as soon as 

 the agriculturists among the argonauts saw their opportunity in the 

 fabulous rates which esculents commanded. Results, too, were more 

 quickly secured with garden seeds than with fruit trees. Only a 

 few weeks after their planting the grower saw that he was dealing 

 with forcing and developing agencies in climate and soil more 

 effective than any he had known in his old home and he was quite 

 as surprised at his own achievements as his eastern friends were 

 incredulous at his descriptions of them. They were ready to believe 

 anything about gold, because their conception of a gold country in- 

 volved its traditional right to be fabulous, but such a concession was 

 not to be made to common vegetables. Eastern people knew cab- 

 bages and beans and to attribute to them colossal dimensions and to 

 allege that they grew from seed to succotash without a drop of rain 

 was simply coarse lying. It is easy to see why a milder word would 

 be considered inadequate, for the following was one of California's 

 first horticultural proclamations : 



On land owned and cultivated by Mr. James Williams, of Santa Cruz, an 

 onion grew to the enormous weight of twenty-one pounds, and a turnip was 

 grown which equaled exactly in size the top of a flour barrel. On land owned 

 and cultivated by Thomas Fallen, a cabbage grew which measured, while 

 growing, 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 partook, 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 hor- 

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



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



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