CALIFORNIA AVOCADO ASSOCIATION 



37 



pounds are usually given to each tree, in five or six applications 

 during the year. During the second year the amount may well be 

 increased to 12 pounds per tree, and the third year to 24 pounds per 

 tree. In the old Bliss grove, now in its eleventh year, each tree 

 receives approximately 50 pounds per year, in four applications. 

 The last application in the fall is given about the end of November ; 

 no more fertilizer is then applied until after the fruit has formed in 

 the spring. 



Some of 3^ou may know S. B. Bliss, who planted the Bliss 

 grove. He spends part of his time here in California and is almost 

 as much of a Californian as he is a Floridan. He had the foresight 

 to start out in an early day, when the planting of budded avocados 

 was looked upon as a rather precarious undertaking, and plant an 

 orchard of nearly twenty acres. The first few years were not with- 

 out their problems, but the enterprise survived all vicissitudes and 

 is today paying handsome returns. We have no $30,000 trees in 

 Florida, such as the newspapers report here in California, but a 

 property like the Bliss grove, if it continues to pay as well as it 

 has the past two years, should liberate a man from financial 

 worries. 



Probably you would be interested to learn some of the actual 

 returns from these Florida groves. I have it from an authoritative 

 source that the average return from one large grove, which shipped 

 over 1400 crates of Trapps during the fall of 1914, was $5.50 per 

 crate net. In another grove the entire crop was marketed at a 

 net price of $5.25 per crate. In this grove the trees produced an 

 average of one and one-half crates of fruit, and there were 70 trees 

 to the acre ; the net profit was, therefore, $550 per acre. The yield 

 per tree seems low^ and has, I believe, been exceeded in sev- 

 eral other instances. W. J. Krome of Homestead, who grows 

 Trapps extensively and who has kept careful crop records, tells 

 me that a tree should yield four crates of fruit at five years of 

 age. This has been a fair average for his trees ; some of them 

 liaA^e fallen as low as 2 or 3 crates, while the average of 4 has 

 been considerably exceeded in other instances. Mr. Cellon says 

 some of his Trapps, which are now 8 or 10 years old, produce 

 from 6 to 10 crates. The average pack is 40 fruits per crate, the 

 extremes being about 23 and 54. At the beginning of the season, 

 i. e., in October, Trapps bring about $2 per crate. By Thanksgiving 



