FRUIT GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 



11 



Parties often take contracts to plough, harrow, and prune 

 young orchards for from 30s. to 40s. an acre for the season. 

 For hilly land which cannot be worked except at a disadvantage, 

 as high as from £2 to £2. 8s. an acre is charged. When a 

 cultivator is used the ground is usually worked from four to ten 

 times in a season, according to the nature of the soil. Orchards 

 are never seeded to grass here as they are in the East. This 

 constant stirring of the soil adds greatly to its productive 

 powers, probably by exposing the plant food to the action of 

 the sun and air, and bringing about chemical changes which 

 make it more easily assimilated by the tree. The cost of this 

 cultivation is often noted by those who have grown fruit in the 

 East, where this system is not followed. The work costs but 

 2s. an acre each time, however, or from 8s. to 14s. an acre each 

 season, and the increased yield makes the work remunerative. 



The cost of pruning varies according to the size and variety 

 of the trees. Prune trees are not now pruned very much. They 

 are, as a rule, merely thinned out to let the air and sunshine in, 

 and allowed to grow with very little if any cutting back. Peach 

 and Apricot trees, however, are cut back heavily in order to 

 avoid the growth of too much wood and too great a weight of 

 fruit. Notwithstanding the heavy pruning, Peaches are always 

 thinned after the crop sets, and even then the branches must be 

 often propped to prevent them from being broken by the weight 

 of fruit. 



The conditions vary so much that each orchard must be 

 estimated for separately by those taking contracts to prune. 

 Contracts range about as follows : — First year, Prunes, from 

 Is. to Is. Ad. a hundred ; second year, Is. Scl. to 2s. ; third year, 

 4s. ; fourth year, 12s. ; fifth year, £1. The price for older 

 Prune trees ranges as high as 36s. a hundred. 



Peaches and Apricots cost more after the second year, being 

 a penny a tree for trees two years old, and 2\d. a tree for trees 

 three years old, and after that about as many halfpennies per 

 tree as the tree is years old up to ten or twelve years. 



Fruit growing, although it is more profitable here than in 

 any other State in the Union, is attended with difficulties as 

 elsewhere, though perhaps in a lesser degree. We never have 

 the severe weather here that prevails in the East ; but even in 

 the Santa Clara Valley, noted for the mildness of its climate, 



