Report of Committee on Citrus Fruits. 
By G* M* Wakclin, Lane Park* 
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen '. 
After conferring* together the com¬ 
mittee decided that every member 
should present an individual report on 
whatever of interest had come to his 
attention. There appeared to be no 
particular phase of the topic for discus¬ 
sion and besides it was doubtful wheth¬ 
er more than one member could be 
present. 
The past eight or nine months have 
tried the soul of the orange grower. 
The usual fall^ drought spread over the 
whole winter and then, merged with the 
expected spring drought, has given 
many sections of the state the driest 
time known for years. The wonderful 
vitality of the orange trees has brought 
them through and will enable them, 
when properly helped by judicious care 
and fertilizing, soon to repair the dam¬ 
age. The effects however will be only 
too evident in a shortage of the com¬ 
ing crop and, where.-groves have suf¬ 
fered very severely, will reduce their 
blooming next February. 
Well, the lesson is—irrigate. Pipe is 
high and advancing all the time but it 
is not nearly so expensive as buying- 
fertilizer at $30 to $40 a ton to make 
bloom and fruit only to have it all fall 
off. The harrow is a wonderful irri¬ 
gator and mulching is also very helpful 
but both are limited and the grower 
finds he must add water to the soil or 
else stand by and see the bloom and 
fruit he worked so hard to get cover 
the ground. Especially is watering 
necessary in old groves where the trees 
are large and often too close together. 
Many of the trees of which I have 
charge are in this category and had 
they not been watered they surely 
would have died. I hope the commit¬ 
tee on irrigation has some new s.ggges- 
tions as to methods of irrigation. 
In addition to the long continued 
drought the poor orange groves had a 
freeze to contend with last December. 
It seemed as if-Jack Frost had a partic¬ 
ular grievance against those who had 
tried to escape him by migrating from 
the old orange belt to the southern 
counties. But in the eastern half of 
Lake county where I am located there 
was slight damage done. The tem¬ 
perature with us did not fall below 27 
degrees and fruit was uninjured. In 
many parts of the state however orang¬ 
es were badly frozen and alas! shipped 
to market as sound fruit. A suspicion 
was thus cast upon sound fruit even 
when under a guarantee, and buyers 
generally took advantage of the situa¬ 
tion to keep prices down to a frozen 
level. I am informed that up to a few 
days ago grape fruit that had been dam¬ 
aged by frost was still going into the 
Philadelphia market. Unless a grower 
has a particular trade to supply through 
some commission man it certainly will 
not pay him to consign fruit, however 
