THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
.05 
ORCHARD PLANTING 
Its Possibilities and When It Will Be Overdone 
An Address Delivered at the Tenth Annual Convention of the Pacific Coast Association of Nurserymen 
in Salt Lake City, June 5, 1912, by Henry W. Kruckeberg, Los Angeles, Cal. 
The topic that my good friends in Utah have assigned 
to me is indeed a large one, fraught with educational and 
economic considerations of importance to the entire range 
of horticultural production, not alone as' it applies . and 
appeals to the individual and single communities, but to the 
country at large. Viewing the subject casually, most of us 
would be influenced, either positively or negatively, in 
opinion, by prevailing conditions in our own experience, 
for the battle of bread is after all the factor that touches 
vitally. If successful in our operations, both as to product 
and commercial returns, we are apt to be optimistic; if the 
contrary, judgment will be pessimistic. Again, many 
will view it within narrow bounds; in other words, from 
experiences met with during only a short period of time. 
Obviously, this cannot be reliable and is based on false 
premises. Pomology is not a vocation to be learned in a 
day; indeed, a full knowledge of a particular line of fruit 
production is never fully mastered in a life time. Verily, 
art is long and life is short. 
Neither is orchard planting a new activity; it is so old 
that its records are buried in the limbo of forgotten things. 
History records the deeds of an Alexander and a Caesar, 
but it fails to tell us who first took the wild crap-apple 
from its native habitat and transplanted it to some Grecian 
or Roman hillside, and by selection, breeding, and manipula¬ 
tion, evolved the first eatable apples; nor does it record the 
first pomologist to treat along similar lines the olive, the plum, 
the fig, or the orange. Little we know of the experiences of 
the ancients in the art of plant breeding, pruning, cultiva¬ 
tion, irrigation, and kindred operations. History is alike 
silent on quarantine regulations, bug inspectors, spraying 
outfits, and parasitic and injurious insects and plant diseases 
as they are understood in our day. Who knows but that 
Caesar, when bug inspectors invaded his orchards and 
gardens on the Tiber, quarantined the whole outfit in the 
arena where they contributed to the joys of a Roman holi¬ 
day? Lucky Caesar! Of all these things of yesterday 
we know little, but we do know that through all the ages 
orchard planting has ever been an enjoyable and lucrative 
occupation of man. At no period.in its history has it ever 
been admitted that its possibilities have been more than 
touched, much less ever fully attained or overdone. 
Viewed from the postulate that there is compensation in 
all things; from the standpoint of man’s contact with the 
universe—it is inconceivable that the science of pomology 
will ever be overdone. Indeed, from the experience of the 
plant breeder, the naturalist, and the scientist, a Darwin, 
a Lemoine, a Mendel, a Batson, or a Burbank, it has scarcely 
been scratched, and its possibilities are beyond the ken of 
the average human life. 
But I take it that we are interested in the economic 
rather than the scientific and ethical phases of orchard 
planting possibilities. To be sure, the plant breeder and 
experimenter ha.s'his place, and a very important one it is too, 
from the fact that we have no product of orchard and vine¬ 
yard, garden and field, but what is subject to improvement; 
if not in all sections, at least in one or more of growth, and 
many in its manipulation after nature has done her work. 
And in this endeavor, in which every fruit grower is educa¬ 
tionally and commercially interested, who are the real 
workers—the factors that make field and orchard operations 
possible and successful ? Plows and harrows, rakes and hoes, 
methods of doing things? No, these are mere incidents. 
The sentinels that stand for success are geology and chem¬ 
istry—the air, the gentle rain, the soil, the clouds, the sun,— 
they make the tree and fruit possible. They work all the 
time, and only in their own way. Shall we say that in the 
sense that man has fellowshipped them to the full, that fruit 
production has reached its limits, either in economy of grow¬ 
ing, or in quantity and quality, that its possibilities have 
been measurably attained? I trow not. What a vista for 
future exploitation and development this thought suggests! 
To mingle with the universe—all out-of-doors,—causing it 
to render full values when intelligently contacted! 
Though man is an integral part of the universe, he only 
learns by contacting it at all angles, no matter what his 
occupation. This it is that leads to intelligent effort, and 
the accomplishment of desired ends. In this heredity 
lends an influence; m.an has a background in past experiences 
and behavior of his trees and plants recorded in the printed 
page. But individual environment and conditions are 
never quite alike, and so he is forced to use his initiative in 
the utilization of the lore of the past to meet the conditions 
of the present; and this leads to contact,^—and of all voca¬ 
tions, who harbors nature in all her varying moods more 
closely than the plant breeder, the plant propagator, and the 
grower of orchard and field crops? Earth is his mine, and 
if intelligently worked will yield up her nuggets of pure gold; 
but woe to the man who misinterprets—negation awaits 
him, and in this she always teaches a lesson for future guid¬ 
ance. Hence, to contact her intelligently is the thing. 
Plant a pine tree out of its environment and it will perish, 
or at best live like a poor relation, always gaunt andhungry- 
looking; but follow her, and drop a cone in the Russian 
River Valley, and she grows a big tree, the wonder of the 
world, alike in its historical aspect and in its majestic size. 
In her own soothing but large way, she seems to say to you, 
“Treat me right, and I’ll give you what you want.’’ 
Man contacts nature by changing the environment of a 
navel orange, transplanting it from Brazil, where it grows 
