()g PACIFIC STATES FLORAL CONGRESS. 



The great German seed farms employ women largely, sometimes 

 altogether, and the wages amount to about forty-five to fifty cents a day. 

 They are excellent labor for flower-seed work; are careful and patient, 

 as well as strong, and from lifelong experience become valuable to a 

 great degree, so much so that a grower's supremacy is maintained largely 

 by his hold on this cheap but intelligent labor. The foreigner's prices 

 are based on this labor, and consequently many things are now too 

 cheap to offer any temptation to us to grow them. 



We grow some nasturtiums (most of them, however, near Aptos, on 

 account of the cool, foggy weather in summer), but our efforts are con- 

 fined to the higher-priced and rarer varieties, and these, too, in limited 

 quantities, for no other reason than a question of labor. Nasturtium 

 seed all falls to the ground, and must be swept up after the plants 

 have done seeding and can be pulled up. 



Last summer some Japanese contracted to gather the seed at harvest- 

 time (after the season's cultivating and hoeing had been done) at ten 

 cents per pound, but after working a few days thought they weren't 

 making anything, so it was necessary to employ men by the day to finish 

 the work, and it cost us more than ten cents a pound to gather the seed. 



Now a certain Holland seed firm offers a very good mixture of tall 

 or climbing mixed nasturtium at nine cents a pound, and I presume they 

 get most of the orders. It is quite evident that it doesn't cost them 

 ten cents a pound to gather their seed off the ground, to say nothing 

 about cleaning it and sacking, shipping, and taking the chances of an 

 occasional loss. 



Our flower-seed growing department began with hollyhocks, ver- 

 benas, and sweet peas, and we have continued to grow them to a greater 

 or less extent ever since that beginning. 



Hollyhocks find but a limited market, since they are not easily grown, 

 owing to the destructive rust, which has proved so disastrous in England. 

 This rust is almost universal now, and is with us, though it can be com- 

 bated more or less, and our acreage of hollyhocks amounts to some three 

 acres, including all colors of double strains and the semi-double fringed 

 type of Allegheny?. While verbena seed with us is a fine, well-seasoned 

 sample, the amount of hand-picking, as well as the nature of it, renders 

 it one of the unprofitable things. 



Of all the flowers we have grown, none have shown our California 

 seed to have such great preference over all others as sweet peas, and the 

 growth of this line with us has been quite remarkable. Some fifty 

 pounds was the extent of our crop fifteen years ago. About one hundred 

 and ten tons was our total sales in 1900, and it has taken from two 

 hundred and fifty to three hundred acres of land every year for several 

 years past to grow them. 



