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CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



branching two feet from the ground it had four main branches, 

 each seven inches in circumference; height of tree, twelve feet; 

 spread of branches, ten feet. It grew near a crack in a cement 

 ditch and so had all the moisture it could use, and being in a free, 

 open soil was not impaired by standing water. 



As for possible productiveness of the peach, one Susquehanna 

 tree in Kern county yielded twenty-seven forty-five pound picking- 

 boxes twelve hundred and fifty pounds in one crop about four 

 times as much as good trees may average. 



LOCALITIES FOR THE PEACH 



The peach has a wide range in California, and finds many dis- 

 tricts suited to it in the several ways in which the trade delights 

 in it. As compared with the apricot, the peach thrives in the 

 sheltered valleys of the district north of the bay and west of the 

 Coast range, in which the apricot is of little commercial moment; 

 it yields those peerlessly beautiful "mountain peaches" from one 

 to two thousand feet higher in the Sierra foot-hills than the apri- 

 cot can be trusted; it goes everywhere in the lower foot-hills and 

 over the great valleys that the apricot will go, and beyond it also, 

 because it is less restless in the spring and escapes some frosts 

 which injure apricots. Counted from trees in orchard the peach 

 is about three times as great as the apricot. 



Nearly every county in California reports the possession of 

 peach trees. Above an elevation of four thousand feet on the sides, 

 of the Sierra Nevada, they may be subject to winter killing, and 

 lower still careful choice of situation has to be made to 'avoid 

 frosts at blooming-time the peach in such places being subjected 

 to some dangers which beset it in the eastern States. Below 

 these points, however, lies the great fruit belt of the foot-hills of 

 the Sierra, where the peach is the chief fruit grown and its excel- 

 lence is proverbial. Size, beauty, richness, delicacy of flavor and 

 firmness, which endures carriage to the most distant markets, are 

 all characteristics of the foot-hill peaches of California. 



In the great interior valleys of the State wherever proper con- 

 dition of soil and water supply can be found, the peach also thrives, 

 the tree making a wonderfully quick and large growth, and the 

 fruit attaining great size. The San Joaquin Valley is the greatest 

 peach district in the State. 



In the small valleys on the west of the great valley and on the 

 eastern slopes of the Coast Range, there are also extensive areas 

 suited to the peach, and sheltered places on the eastern and western 

 edges of the Sacramento Valley have produced the earliest fruit 

 for a long series of years. Recently the contest for the earliest fruit 



