Vegetable Growing 89' 



plenty of time for disintegration, would probably give you distress- 

 ful cucumber plants, if it has come right out of wheat-growing. Be- 

 sides, cucumbers do not like dry heat, even if the soil be kept moist 

 by irrigation. Oranges will do well under conditions not favorable 

 to cucumbers. Cucumber plants must come up after danger of frost 

 is over. The amount of water they require depends upon how moist 

 the soil is naturally, and as the crop is chiefly grown on moist river 

 lands and around the bay, it is chiefly made without irrigation. Such 

 lands have a cucumber capacity equal to the consumption of the 

 United States, probably, and the pickle factories can usually get all 

 they can use at a minipium transportation cost. Large-scale plant- 

 ings should only be made by men who know the crop and have defi- 

 nite information or contract for what they can get for it. 



Ginger in California. 



iVe have ginger roots in a growing condition with sprouts and bulbs 

 growing on them, but zue do not understand hozvto raise the plants. 



Growing ginger in California in a commercial way has not been 

 worked out, although roots have been introduced from time to time. 

 Plant your roots in the garden, just as you would callas, where you 

 can give them good cultivation and water, as seems to be necessary, 

 and note their behavior under these favorable conditions before you 

 undertake any large investment in a crop. 



Licorice Growing in California. 



/ have for some time been seeking for some information as to the 

 method of preparation for market and sale of licorice roots'. I have a- 

 lot of them and have never been able to Und a market, and do not knoio 

 hozv they are prepared for market. 



Licorice was first planted in California about 1880 by the late 

 Isaac Lea, of Florin, Sacramento county. Mr. Lea grew a consider- 

 able amount of licorice roots and gave much efifort to finding a mar- 

 ket for it. He found that the local consumption of licorice root was 

 too small to warrant growing it as a crop; that the high price of 

 labor in digging the roots, and the high cost of transportation of 

 the roots to Eastern markets would make it impossible for him to 

 undertake competition in the Eastern markets with the Sicilian pro- 

 ducers, unless, perhaps, he could build an extracting factory and 

 market licorice extract, the black solid which is sold by the drug- 

 gist, and which the Sicilians produce in large quantities. The prep- 

 aration of licorice root is simply digging and drying, but the prep- 

 aration of the extract requires steam extractors and condensers. 

 California could produce licorice, for we have a good climate for it. 

 If it is grown on light, sandy loams, it could be pulled from the 

 ground by the yard at rather small expense, and yet, one should not 

 undertake the production unless he wished to put in much time and 

 money in working up economical production and marketing in com- 

 petition with the foreign product, produced by cheap labor and with 



