8 /-. ' ;; CALIFORNIA VEGETABLES 



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 cir- 

 cumference, 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." J 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 fer- 

 tility had been accumulating for ages, and the forcing power of a 

 climate wholly new to Americans. In later years California has sur- 

 passed even these early standards through the employment of higher 

 horticultural skill, as will be described presently, but it was upon 

 the achievements of the vegetable growers at the very beginning of 

 the American occupation that California's horticultural reputation 

 was established. 



How the Pioneers Prospered by Vegetable Growing. It would 

 be easy to collect quite a volume of interesting instances of how 

 success was attained in the early days, but a single experience must 

 suffice. It illustrates both the resources of the pioneers and the 

 country which they found. G. G. Briggs left New York state in 

 April, 1849, and arrived in California in October of the same year, 

 driving an ox team and walking most of the way. He says : 



When I arrived in California I saw at once that there were other means 

 of accumulating gold besides digging it from the mines; that miners and all 

 classes would need turnips and cabbage and other products of the soil; that 

 even then many were suffering with scurvy and other diseases for the want of 

 fresh vegetable food. The large crops of native grapes on the banks of the 

 Sacramento were proof of the productive capacity of the California soil and 

 climate. Reaching Sacramento, our party of four had no money and no prop- 

 erty but our wagon and three yoke of oxen. I could find no work whatever. 

 I got trusted by a storekeeper for a sack of walnuts and sold them to passers 

 by the teacupfull and in five days cleared fifty dollars. We sold our oxen and 

 with my part of the money I went to San Francisco to buy garden seeds with 

 which to start vegetable growing on a piece of land I had seen previously in 

 the bottom of the Yuba river, near the present site of Marysville. As it was 

 too early in the season to plant, I bought a whale-boat and began freighting 



2 Western Hort. Review, Feb., 1852. 



