Orange trees are planted about twenty feet apart, but the groves do not look as apple orchards do in the East, for no grass is allowed to grow in them.
The best orange section is east of here, near Redlands and Riverside, but some good fruit is raised near Pasadena also.
Father keeps our trees pruned down rather low, so that it is easier to pick the oranges than it would be if they were allowed to grow very tall.
Orange raising is like cranberry growing in one way—the land must be irrigated in each case. Here the water is piped from the mountain streams and from tunnels. We form basins about ten feet square around each tree and fill them with water. Most of our irrigating is done during the summer, as the winter is our rainy season. You would not call it a very rainy time. Our average is about twenty inches for the whole year.
The trees in our grove have been set out about six years, and they are bearing nicely now. Orange trees begin to bear when they are four years old; so, you see, we have to wait a little longer for a crop than you do for a crop of cranberries. It costs a good deal to start an orange grove. Trees cost from one dollar to one and one-half dollars each at the nurseries. A few years ago they sold for twenty cents each.
I wish that you could see the trees when they are in full blossom, and also when they are loaded with the golden fruit. I am going to put some orange blossoms into the envelope, but I am afraid they will not reach you in very good condition. They are very fragrant, and you can smell their perfume some distance from a tree in blossom.
To-day we picked about two hundred and fifty boxes of oranges. We always speak of picking them, although they are not picked, but cut. You see, if they were picked off, the part where the stem pulled off would soon begin to decay.
We take a wagon load of fruit boxes, and, while father drives slowly between the rows of trees, I throw them off.
Fig. 56.—Picking Oranges in California.