FRUIT GROWING IN CALIFORNIA. 
27 
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. 4 d. a hundred; second year, Is. 8d. to 2s.; third year, 
4s.; fourth year, 12s.; fifth year, £1. The price for older 
Prune trees ranges as high as 86s. 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, 
