THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS ^ CON\TENTION. 



91 



deaux mixture, but instead of using 4-4-40, used 4-4-80. What virtue 

 there is in that remains to be seen from future developments. 



The man who is doing that is going out into orchards that are 

 affected, and he agrees to do the wori^ for nothing if you will give him 

 half the increase of the crop. He has taken a few orchards that way, 

 and I visited one of the owners the other day, and he said his crop had 

 doubled since the treatment commenced. He is using, in conjunction 

 with barnj^ard manure, commercial fertilizer, and the increase he gets 

 may be due to that, so that is no sure evidence. 



Mr. Leroy wants me to tell about an orchard that had a very bad 

 case of puffing in it over at Pomona. A man has thirty acres of 

 orchard, and right through the center of it has a gravel streak with 

 cobblestones mostly, and his trees in that part of the orchard dry out 

 in about two Aveeks after irrigation. He only irrigates once in thirty 

 days. I have seen those trees with the leaves all curled. They looked as 

 though they never would recover. Hovrever, they held the fruit, and 

 when picking time came there were about sixty per cent of the oranges 

 on those trees that were puffed and cracked — some cracked lengthwise 

 and at all sorts of angles. That looked like a good evidence of irregular 

 conditions. 



MR. LEROY. I will not take up much more of your time. "We only 

 have one more gentleman to speak. He needs no introduction to you. 

 You all know Mr. Bishop, of Orange. 



MR. BISHOP. The orchard with which I have had experience was 

 planted or budded in 1876 — that is, the orange trees. The lemon trees 

 are of a later date. I have considered for a long time myself that the 

 gum disease was a constitutional condition, and not an infectious dis- 

 ease. I can show you scaly bark on the orange tree on all kinds of soil 

 from black adobe to light sand. I can show the gum disease of the 

 lemon on all kinds of soil, without an exception. If you find the disease 

 in a lemon tree before it has advanced very far you can cure it, or stop it 

 for a considerable time by cutting it out, as you would an ulcer. You 

 can do the same with scah^ bark if you find it early enough. In a big 

 seedling orchard where a tree is badly affected with scaly bark, you take 

 the tree up and plant a new one, and the young tree will have a hard 

 time to get a start. So we are trying these experiments after having 

 dug up some trees and having found a magnificent root system with a 

 hole nearly large enough to bury a horse. By sawing that tree off with 

 a crosscut saw low enough dow^n so that there was no dark center, the 

 new sprouts from that would make a good tree, it would make a good 

 budded tree. We are trying that experiment now upon about fifteen 

 trees. But if the disease is old enough so that the wood is dark at the 

 grain, you might as well take it out and start anew. I have dug up a 

 ten-acre lemon orchard in the last two years that w^as absolutely ruined 

 by gum disease before we had sense enough to do anything for it. Now, 

 I am planting it anew. I don't knoAv that it would be of any advantage 

 to say I am planting it with bitter Seville orange trees, budded twelve 

 to twenty inches above the surface of the ground. That is the condition 

 in which the orchard is being planted. 



