84 
FLORIDA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 
next year’s crop. Up to the present time 
no bloom has appeared worth mentioning, 
so it is probable that they have lost prac¬ 
tically the entire crop for the next sea¬ 
son. Their trees were in good shope be¬ 
fore the freeze and a conservative esti¬ 
mate of the crop for next season placed 
it at 200 boxes per acre which is not by 
any means excessive. As grapefruit are 
now bringing two to three dollars per box 
the loss on fruit alone will be practically 
$400 per acre. As protection could have 
been obtained for from two to three hun¬ 
dred dollars per acre the saving on next 
year’s crop would have paid for this pro¬ 
tection. Then consider the loss for two 
to three years to follow and the expense 
of pruning out the enormous amount of 
dead wood, and it is readily seen that the 
investment would have paid well. As 
this grove covers about four hundred 
acres the loss is enormous. 
The sources of heat used in firing are 
wood, oil and coke. The wood is very 
satisfactory, the main objection to it be¬ 
ing the difficulty in getting enough wood 
for large acreage. In preparing to fire 
it is essential that enough wood be pro¬ 
vided to fire three nights in succession, 
as, usually, the severe freezes are of this 
duration. It is useless to fire one. night 
and let your trees freeze on the second 
night. Another point of importance is to 
provide a large number of fires and not to 
be too saving of wood. Endeavor to save 
the grove and not the fire wood, should 
be the warning given the men attending 
the fires. The average of a large num¬ 
ber of fires is a better distribution of heat 
without danger of scorching the trees 
nearest the fires. One hundred fires to 
the acre is recommended. 
When firing with oil pots it is just as 
important to provide a supply of fuel for 
three successive nights, and just as im¬ 
portant to have a large number of fires. 
One hundred to the acre is recommended 
as giving the best protection, though one 
in every square where trees are spaced 
twenty-five foot centers has given good 
results. The oil for the first night is 
stored in the pots in the grove. The re¬ 
serve fuel is stored in tanks at convenient 
places about the grove and distributed by 
means of wagon tanks. The grower 
should use an oil which is not too heavy, 
for two reasons: The first is that the 
heavy oils obtainable in Florida come 
from Texas and have an asphalt base 
which cannot be burned in the ordinary 
oil fire pot; it, therefore, remains as a resi¬ 
due in the pot and after several firings re¬ 
duces the capacity of the heater to a con¬ 
siderable extent. The second objection is 
the difficulty in getting this heavy oil to 
run through valves and pipes when the 
temperature is around thirty-five degrees. 
Heavy oil is like molasses under these 
conditions. The fuel best suited is what 
is known as “fuel distillate.” 
The use of oil pots has many objections 
among which may be mentioned the dam¬ 
age to roots of the trees through spilling 
of oil, the high initial cost of the pots, 
storage tanks, and oil sufficient to give 
the necessary protection, and the difficulty 
in refilling these pots after the first night’s 
freeze. For these reasons many growers 
are turning to coke stoves. 
The stoves cost less than the oil pots; 
