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THE AVOCADO PAYS
WE have recently received an inquiry from a Homeseeker reader asking for information regarding the avocado or alligator pear. The following editorial, by S. A. Murden, in the current number of Tropical Topics, answers our correspondent:
"We look ahead to the time now close by, when the seedling avocado, known commonly as the alligator pear, will be the most profitable fruit crop on our stations. In the Modello section they can be grown to perfection, and take only four years to produce fine crops of fruit. We have never seen or known avocados of good quality fail to bring excellent prices.
"Early last year while we had been buying for our own use nice small fruits at 60 cents per dozen, and we were reveling in the fact that we could certainly sell them all that we cared for, in a single day they jumped to $1.20 per dozen, and remained there until they jumped again. We will never live to see well-cared for avocados sell at a low price, when right here where they grow they are in such demand. It has only been of late years, in fact only within a year or two, that people have thought it necessary to give the trees and seedlings the care they need, but they have learned that potash will more than double the crop, and will increase the value by adding to the delicious nutty flavor that belongs to the avocado alone. We advise all newcomers to plant avocados, and we refer to the seedlings. Avocados can be budded as easily as the orange, and if there is any one who tries to improve a fruit already perfect, it is easy to have the budding done, even if one cannot do it themselves."
FERTILIZATION OF FRUIT TREES.
It seems strange to the writer that so little, if any, attention has been given to the assisting of fertilization of fruit trees. The avocado blooms freely but drops a very large portion of the bloom before the fruit sets. The Mulgoba mango is considered by many who are planting groves because of the well-known fact that while it blooms profusely, few of the blooms set fruit. That this has been allowed to pass without notice is strange, for no experience with fruit-growing may be passed by, but the writer, when a child, knew the fruit growers in New York state to rely on bees to carry the pollen from tree to tree, thus ensuring the fertilization of the bloom and make sure of saving crops. There is in no way any objection to keeping bees; honey is salable and is only another source of profit to the fruit grower. Bees are as useful to the fruit grower as is fertilizer, only more so. We quote from a late issue of Green's Fruit Grower, the following along this line, and hope our Avocado growers, as well as others, will advocate the bee proposition:
Fruit growers are beginning to realize the necessity of bees for the proper fertilizing of fruit bloom, and that these two industries are mutually inter-dependent. If anything, the fruit grower derives much more benefit from the bees than the bee keeper himself. A number of years ago the veteran bee keeper and queen breeder, Harvey Alley, of Massachusetts, now deceased, was obliged to move his bees away, owing to complaints of farmers, who claimed that bees were a nuisance, but after a year or two they were glad to get him back again, because of so little fruit in proportion to the number of blossoms.
I have in mind an account I read in one of the local journals of a man in New York state, who bought a farm and set it out to fruit trees, expecting to flood the market with fruit. After a few years waiting and no fruit, he exhibited his soil to another. The second man thought he had a bonanza, but soon found out his mistake and sold. The third buyer was a bee keeper, and wanted it as a location for bees, and at the same time mistrusting the cause of the barrenness of the orchard. The result was that the first year he harvested thousands of barrels of the finest fruit ever raised in that section, and the orchard has continued to bear since.
PLANT EXPERT IS
VISITING FRIENDS
Robert Beagles, Director of
Chico Station, Guest on
Northside.
MORE MEN NEEDED
IN THE SERVICE
Water Question in Society's
Territory Is Again
Given a Stir.
NORTHSIDE, Oct. 26.-Mr. and
Mrs. Robert Beagles, late of
Washington, D. C., are visiting on
the Northside, and are likely to go
to Chico, where Mr. Beagles will
take charge of the government experiment
station there.
The station has been established
four years, and has had a new
director each year. Mr. Beagles
has been with us in our capacity of
an entomologist since its
establishment.
The station now has eighty acres
under cultivation, and it is doing
a great deal of work. One of its
most interesting tasks is the prop-
agation and distribution of a species
of spineless cactus, similar to that
which grows wild in Arizona. A good
many samples of this have been
distributed to ranchers, but reports
as to its success have not yet been
received.
Mr. Beagles is an enthusiast on
the avocado, although the climate at
Chico is not so suitable for it. He
proposes that it will become one
of the most valuable products of South-
ern California within a few years.
The greatest difficulty in our work
is that of getting good men for it," remarked Mr. Beagles today. "There
are not enough trained men in the
country, and a great difficulty for young
men who have a liking for
horticultural work and will devote
themselves to it, is that they can not get
many clerical jobs, who are expert in
the work, because the government
does not offer sufficiently large salaries
to attract them from private employment."
