Horticulture has been reduced to a science by disseminating knowledge and a hearty coöperation of fruit growers to extend the interests of the State in every way possible.
The history of horticulture in the State of California almost up to the present time has been one of experimenting, ascertaining the adaptability of the soil to certain kinds of fruits, and testing what European and Eastern trees do well in this climate, for many varieties make utter failures, while others are improved beyond recognition.
Californians have had to learn also that a horticultural precedent has been established here, independent of what obtains in other countries. Although ideas and methods have been gleaned from abroad, application to local and special needs have metamorphosed them to a great extent. Hap-hazard planting in California is humbug unless wedded to Yankee shrewdness.
Know your soil and its elements, the atmosphere, heat, and moisture and exposure; then ascertain what fruits do well under those limitations.
Clear your land, plow and sow a crop of something to mellow up the soil, the next year plant your young trees. Climate will be your fellow-worker and steadfast friend. Nine-twelfths of the year a man can sit down and watch nature work. The man who complains of climate in California should be banished from this paradise, for even the golden fruit of Hesperides would be but clay to one whose birthright is discontent.
What will constitute California's future glory will be the division of the lands into small holdings of from twenty acres up to about two hundred acres; where owners give their personal supervision; where the excellence of the fruits should be the consideration, over and above the profits; where men who resort to practices in the business that cheapen the standard of fruits should be forced out of the market; where every man works for the good of the whole; where the pride of the horticulturist, and not the greed of the speculator, obtains, and where the specialist and student flourish. If these conditions will not make California the greatest fruit-producing country on earth, then human ingenuity is at fault, and not climate.
Many a tourist in coming to San Francisco, and it might be said it is the exception when it is not so, has wondered if California fruits can make no better showing than the sour, half-ripened fruit he partakes of; last, but not least, the prices he pays for this fruit are so incredulously high that he wonders if it can be possible he can be eating imported fruit, and not the production of the California soil. Then he compares his experience here with that abroad; at the forts along the Mediterranean for a cent or two he can entirely satisfy a robust appetite with luscious fruit.
California fruit growers are so busy at present over their export trade that home consumption is relegated to the leavings, under the same principle a cobbler's children have no shoes.
Great things are expected of the olive industry of this State. Although the last returns showed but little over eleven thousand gallons of oil from the last crop, there are thousands upon thousands of young trees not yet in bearing. The oil produced is of a superior quality, and leads the sanguine to believe that the olive crown will yet rest upon our brows.
Fruit curing is, and will continue to be, one of the first industries of the State. The figures for the season just passed will aggregate 48,700,000 pounds of dried fruit, nearly four-fifths of which will represent French prunes; this is but a mere bagatelle to what the crop will be several years hence.