PROCEEDINGS OF THIRTY-SIXTH FRUIT-GROWERS ' CONVENTION. 39 



of our trees. It is a point that needs emphasis, and it must have it. 

 I Applause.) 



PRESIDENT JEFFREY. I would like to call Mr. Dargitz' atten- 

 tion to the fact that he only spoke of the grafting- or budding of the 

 trees. In propagating pedigreed stock you should, perhaps, pay as 

 much attention to the root part of the proposition as to the scion or bud, 

 consequently it would add more than three cents to the expense. Most 

 nurserymen make an ordinary length of seedling root to produce three 

 or four roots for grafting. It is much more expensive to produce a tree 

 on a whole root, which ought to be done if you are going to put a pedi- 

 greed top on it. Another thing, the nurseryman, if you deal with a 

 nurseryman, ought to be well paid for the honesty and skill in pro- 

 ducing a pedigreed tree, because he is giving you a start that even your 

 grandchildren may enjoy in gathering the fruit from those trees. 



MR. DARGITZ. Mr. Chairman, I don't believe that any nursery- 

 man in the State of California would want to come out and openly 

 announce to the public that he was progagating trees, pedigreed or 

 otherwise, from piece roots. I think he would like to have it under- 

 stood that he is using whole roots and the best roots. 



MR. HICKMAN. I would like to say that pedigreed stock is a great 

 thing in every industry, whether it be stock raising or what not. But 

 there is another feature, the place to put the pedigreed stock, which, 

 according to my observation, is very sadly neglected. I can show you, 

 almost within sight of this very building, places where thousands of 

 good trees have been thrown away, simply by planting where they 

 never should have been planted ; places that are noted as raising very 

 tine fruit have thrown away something more than half their capital — 

 very much more, and even after the trees are planted, the care they 

 receive is not "pedigreed" care. Even the best of pedigreed stock will 

 starve to death; and, though I am not a horticultural commissioner at 

 present, I may be some time, and I think it should be one of the duties 

 of a horticultural commissioner to protect, so far as it lies in his power, 

 the tree planter from his own ignorance. I have been just as ignorant 

 as others in this. I have paid dearly for my experience. I know what 

 it means to have pedigreed stock. I have seen Newtown trees producing 

 four or five boxes of choice fruit and right beside them trees that would 

 produce ten boxes of worthless fruit, year after year, and, as far as it 

 laid in my power. I have made the changes and used pedigreed scions 

 and so on. But going right through the same orchard. I find there are 

 other conditions besides the pedigree or the stock or the scion that cut 

 fully as great a figure. A year ago we had a very heavy rainstorm, and 

 I. in common with most other unprepared orchardists. found a great 

 many gullies Avashed in my orchard, and here and there were little ridges 

 of rock, which showed that there were basins that needed draining. I 

 was wondering for some time why certain trees did practically nothing. 

 I can show you trees within fifty feet of each other on the same hill slope, 

 every other condition apparently identical — the trees were identical 

 when taken from the nursery row — and within three years' time one 

 tree is ten times as large as another, not only in one place but in dozens. 

 It is a hill orchard and in sandy land. These are conditions worth 

 looking into, and it seems to me they should be emphasized in the 

 reports of our conventions. 



