THE SWISS CHARD 151 



Morse's Improved Blood Turnip, especially selected for style 

 and quality, deep red, green tops. 



A. & M. Bassano, commanded for tenderness and shapeliness 

 and flavor. Popular with market gardeners. 



Crosby's Egyptian, of flatter form than Early Egyptian, good 

 for early use, but maintains tenderness well as it gets larger size, 

 very bright clear red flesh. 



Edmunds' Blood Turnip is another favorite market variety, 

 round and smooth, deep color and good quality. 



Early Blood Turnip is also largely grown. It is round, good 

 form and quality. 



Long Smooth Blood is an old standard variety for those who 

 like beets for slicing. It roots deeply and stands drought well. 



THE LEAF-BEET OR SWISS CHARD. 



This plant is a beet grown for its foliage and not for its root, 

 which is small and branching. Its cultivation is, however, exactly 

 like that of the beet root, except that its rooting habit allows of 

 shallow tillage, but it enjoys good conditions in the soil and mani- 

 fests its delight by grander foliage, which is very desirable and is 

 used as spinach is. Chard is not largely grown in California be- 

 cause conditions are so favorable for continual supplies of spinach, 

 which is preferred, and yet many find it desirable. It is also grown 

 for green feed for poultry in the autumn from planting as late 

 as July. 



THE SUGAR BEET IN CALIFORNIA. 



All that has been said in preceding chapters on California 

 climates and soils has direct reference to the exceptional adaptation 

 of the state to the growth of the sugar beet and the manufacture 

 of beet sugar. The vast area of rich, deep, loamy and easily- 

 worked soils, which afford the plant deep rooting, free expansion 

 and large yield of rich beets; the equable climate, which insures 

 ample sun-action, freedom from low temperature, and an almost 

 continuous growing season through the year for a hardy plant like 

 the beet, and thus provides for sugar factories a maximum working 

 season without protection of the rich, raw material from freezing 

 these are local advantages for beet growing and sugar making the 

 importance of which it is difficult to overestimate. There are also 

 many incidental advantages and benefits in ground which does not 

 freeze and in factories where the absence of freezing temperature 

 makes it unnecessary to build for protection of men, materials and 

 machinery, except from heat and rain. 



Extent of the Industry. Eleven beet-sugar factories in Cali- 

 fornia produced, in 1916, 243,800 tons of sugar, from 144,200 acres 

 of beets. Large as this quantity is, it is small compared with the 

 possible production in California, as there are seven hundred and 

 fifty thousand acres perfectly adapted to the raising of sugar beets. 



