130 THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 



soils suitable to its culture become of prime importance. In bringing 

 the abandoned grainfields back to a state of high cultivation and profit, 

 the grape has done more, perhaps, than any other crop now grown in 

 the State. In this work it is scarcel}^ well started. In the San Joaquin 

 and Sacramento valleys are many such abandoned grainfields. On 

 many of them, especially on the red sandy loam or hardpan land, 

 wine and table grapes have converted those fields into the most pros- 

 perous of farms. The Tokay grape has been found to produce best 

 on just such soils. Wine grapes show fine returns, and produce a grape 

 excellent in quality and color on these abandoned fields. ]\Iany areas 

 of loose or wind blown sand, which ^yere either wholly unfit for crop- 

 ping or had been abandoned for grain farming, have i3een found to be 

 suitable to grape culture. In some of these areas irrigation with pumps 

 is possible for grapes, because a small amount of water in furrows will 

 go a long waj^s. When water from ditches is scarce, the planting of 

 vineyards is welcomed in such sandy soils in irrigated districts, on 

 account of the conservation of the water for such crops as alfalfa, 

 vrhich requires flooding. Other important soils reclaimed by the grape 

 are those found in unirri gated districts which can not be irrigated. 

 Many such soils, when planted to grapes and cultivated at such time 

 that moisture from the sky above or subsoil below is carefully retained, 

 give good returns. Such culture in areas of deficient rainfall may 

 be called dry farming or the ''Campbell" system applied to perennial 

 crops. These crops are much more certain than grain crops, and 

 are well adapted to this culture. Soils thus treated range from wind 

 blown sands to adobe or clay soils. The sands of the San Bernardino 

 Valley, now beina extensively planted to grapes, represent such soil and 

 culture. Many heavy soils in the interior valley produce good vine- 

 yards by proper cultivation when no irrigation is possible or profitable. 



HARDPAN. 



In the utilization of hardpan soils fruits, and most especially grapes, 

 have played a most important part. In the San Joaquin and Sacra- 

 mento valleys there exist two "great classes of soils containing hardpan 

 at depths sometimes too close to the surface for orchards or alfalfa. 

 These classes consist of the red soils lying near the foothills and under- 

 lain by red, or iron hardpan. and the gray or brown plains soils 

 underlain by white hardpan. On the red hardpan soils vineyards have 

 been planted until it is now surely demonstrated that four feet of 

 good soil is sufficient for a good vineyard. In fact, this is considered 

 more than is absolutely necessary for good grape production when the 

 top soil, to about a foot in depth, consists of a mellow loam or sandy 

 loam and the immediate subsoil a tenacious red clay loam, making 

 a total depth of only two feet. Excellent vineyards have been grown 

 on such combination of soil, this entirely without irrigation. While 

 this condition of soil and subsoil is the extreme, it shows that shallow 

 hardpan soils with proper care and cultivation can be made to produce 

 profitable vineyards. It is even true, in some localities, that such 

 grapes as the Tokaj^ and Emperor show better results under just such 

 conditions. 



In a number of instances the appearance of ground water within a 

 few feet of the surface has been taken advantage of by ^^neyardists to 



