l6o ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 



from thirty-seven dollars and a half to forty-five dollars per 

 acre ; at five years from the bud, or three years from planting, 

 seventy-five dollars; and the next year one hundred and fifty 

 dollars per acre, or a total of more than two hundred and sixty 

 dollars in three years. An orchard planted to seedlings, four 

 years old, will seldom produce any fruit in three years from 

 planting. 



"An acre of four-year-old seedlings will cost, at twenty-five 

 cents each, eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents ; an acre of 

 budded trees, at one dollar each, will cost seventy-five dollars ; 

 difference in favor of seedlings, fifty-six dollars and twenty-five 

 cents. The first three years of return from the budded orchard 

 will pay the difference and leave a balance of more than two 

 hundred dollars in favor of buds." 



It may be proper to remark that prices of trees fluctuate, and 

 that there is not now the relative difference between the cost of 

 seedlings and buds that there was at the lime of this discussion. 

 There has, however, been but a small percentage of the buds 

 offered for sale that were in every respect what could be truth- 

 fully ca\\e& first-class. Probably the want of a proper knowledge 

 of the best season of the year in which to bud, and 'the manage- 

 ment of the buds while in the nursery, has been one of the 

 principal causes, if not the cause, of there having been so many 

 inferior buds. 



[Since the time of this discussion I have come to the con- 

 clusion that twenty feet apart is far enough for buds, which 

 distance would require one hundred and eight and nine-tenths 

 per acre, to be exact, AUTHOR.] 



Dr. Congar, of Pasadena, opposed budding. He said bud- 

 ding had been abandoned in Lower California ; that they even 

 plant the seed where the orchard is to standj thus saving the 

 t ap-root, which is essential. The public demand a large orange ; 

 they do not care so much for its flavor. If a growing tree bears 

 early, the fruit is produced at the expense of the growth of the 

 tree. Will a tree thus dwarfed ever be as large as a seedling 

 that more nearly gets its growth before fruiting? We must have 

 a tree before we can get the fruit. He considered the budding 

 of the orange an experiment, and was willing to let "well 



