THIRTY-FOURTH FRUIT-GROWERS^ CONVENTION. 



135 



They threw the seed down and started to run, but had not gone far 

 before they were overtaken by the vine and had to call for help to 

 extricate themselves. That is our California soil. 



I think that while the soils may have something to do with the 

 character of our fruit. I am quite sure that we can grow fruit of equal 

 character on any soil — it don't make any difference. Here is where 

 intelligent farming comes in. I have from a very light sandy loamy 

 soil to a very heavy soil, almost to adobe, and I grow fruit of equal 

 keeping' qualities on one the same as the other. So that I think if 

 all of our farmers would come to these institutes and these con- 

 ventions and hear these papers, and go home and put into practice the 

 knowledge they have gained, they will find they have overcome almost 

 any deficiency of soil or any obstinacy of heavy soil or deficiency of 

 light soil, and grow an equal cpiality of fruit. We do it doAvn in 

 Orange County. 



MR. MILLS. Allow me to say with ^Ir. Chapman that if our horti- 

 culturists would come to these meetings they would carry away a 

 very great deal that they need. Those of us who come to them go 

 away from them with something always, and sometimes with more than 

 at other times. I Avish to apologize to you, who have como from long 

 distances, for the mere baker's dozen of Riverside horticulturists who 

 have been among you. They need the information, and they need it 

 mightily. 



^IR. CHAPMAN. Maybe they think they know how to grow citrus 

 fruits. 



MR. :\nLLS. That is the trouble. The subject is the ''Relation of 

 the Soil to the Fruit." The fruit we grow, the vegetables we grow, 

 the crops we grow of different kinds, must have something to grow 

 upon. The soil is but the stomach which supports the tree and grows 

 the fruit. Man is but a walking tree. He has not got his feet stuck 

 down in the soil like the tree and made stationary, but nevertheless he 

 grows, and he does his work much like a tree. He has got to feed, 

 and the food has to be digested and made into forms that will force 

 the vital fluids through the body and build up the structure with which 

 his mind will work, and he will do the work that God has given him to 

 do. If man carelessly watches his physical conditions, if man foolishly 

 eats that which is not good for him. he becomes unhealthy — otherwise, 

 physically unfit to do the work given him to do, and you see him 

 walking up and do^^Ti through the earth, a wreck of a man. unfit for the 

 work he has to do. 



And so we see in our orchards, conditions that lead us to believe that 

 the relation of the soil to the fruit is not just right— the relation of 

 the stomach to the man, or the stomach to the tree, is not just right. 

 We have got to have conditions right if we are going to grow the fruit 

 that we want, and grow the quantity we want to grow and the quality 

 we want to grow. Fruits need water, they need nitrogen, phosphoric 

 acid, potash, sulphide of iron, chlorine, and other things ; but the things 

 we have to deal with, Avhich the tree needs for the growth of itself and 

 the production of its fruits for the children of men, are three things, 

 next to moisture — nitrogen, phosphoric acid, and potash. 



