CALIFORNIA TRUCK- GARDENING. 



603 



grapes, twenty tons ; quinces, two and a half tons ; 

 cherries, two tons ; figs, one ton ; potatoes, thirty tons; 

 onions, twenty-five tons ; cabbage, twenty tons; cauli- 

 flower, one and a half tons ; carrots, five tons ; par- 

 snips, five tons; beets, three tons; sweet-potatoes, four 

 tons ;; water-melons, a hundred tons; musk-melons, 

 twenty-five tons ; cucumbers, two and a half tons ; peas, 

 three tons; beans, four tons; turnips, seven tons; 

 rutabagas, two tons; green corn, ten tons ; squash and 

 pumpkins, four tons ; tomatoes, forty tons ; green pep- 

 pers and okra, half a ton ; lettuce, spinach, radishes, 

 celery, asparagus and artichokes, ten tons in all." 

 QThe most noted truck-gardening ever done in California 

 was in pioneer days, when one man made j?40,ooo in one 

 season out of water- 

 melons, and another 

 cleared S 160, 000 on 

 potatoes, corn, beans, 

 cabbages, etc., which 

 brought enormous 

 prices in the mines. 

 Potatoes being worth 

 $50 a sack, every val- 

 ley farmer planted 

 them the next year, 

 and thousands of 

 sackfulls rotted in the 

 field, not being worth 

 the digging. The 

 largest crops of pota- 

 toes now grown in 

 California come from 

 the reclaimed tule 

 lands. The best in 

 point of quality are 

 from the rich moun- 

 tain valleys. As high 

 as two hundred and 

 fifty sacks, weighing 

 about thirteen tons, 

 are sometimes ob. 

 tained from an acre. 

 In Humboldt county, 

 last year, four hun- 

 dred and ninety tons were dug from forty-five acres of 

 bottom land that had not been cropped for years, and 

 had never received any fertilizers whatever. The Colo- 

 rado potato-beetle has never been seen in California, 

 and petato rot is extremely rare. The only disease 

 known, and that at long intervals and on limited areas, 

 is the potato blight. 



Of late years, the "early districts" are being planted 

 extensively to "new potatoes," which are more and 

 more in demand. In Alameda county, last year, a 

 Portuguese truck-farmer rented hill land at $5 an acre, 

 and cleared, I am told, nearly $200 an acre in "early 

 potatoes." The experiment of shipping to New York 

 will probably be tried next year. 



Beans are becoming one of the most notable of Cali- 



fornia crops. It takes fourteen hundred freight cars to 

 carry the bean surplus east, and the state undoubtedly 

 leads all others in the Union, not merely in the famous 

 Lima bean, but in all other kinds also. The "bean- 

 belt " begins in the warmer portions of Alameda and 

 Santa Clara, and becomes important in Monterey ; but 

 San Luis Obispo, Ventura and Santa Barbara are the 

 centers of the industry. The total bean output of the 

 state is about forty million pounds, worth fully a million 

 dollars in the field. The requisites of a bean farm are 

 a rich soil, and a climate that ripens the beans up 

 evenly, so as to get the largest possible crop. Lima 

 beans last year paid the grower from |,ioo to $250 per 

 acre, and as a Santa Paula correspondent recently 



A California SyuASH Field. 



wrote of the Ventura country: "Bean planters, bean 

 hoes, bean cutters, bean pullers, bean threshers, bean 

 cleaners, bean buyers, bean experts, bean agents and 

 bean -patch mashers — mighty is bean down this way ! 

 The bean industry in this section has reached propor- 

 tions little expected a few years ago, and to-day your 

 correspondent finds families comfortably situated and 

 well-to-do, who came here, only yesterday, as it were, 

 flat broke, and they have demonstrated that any indus- 

 trious family can ' get there' on a small farm by culti- 

 vating beans " 



At the present time the chief products from tomato 

 culture are from the very early crop. The "main 

 crop" is often worthless and decays on the vines. The 

 excellence of the tomatoes, as grown in our rainless 



