Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 June 1894 — PROFIT IN ORANGES. [ARTICLE]

PROFIT IN ORANGES.

Something About the Crop of Southern California. The first oranges in Southern California were planted by the old mission fathers, who undoubtedly brought the seed from Spain, where it was originally carried from Arabia by wandering tribes. The orange is a remarkable tree. It flourishes in what is apparently the poorest soil, is always green, ripe fruit will hang on its limbs for a year, and it is always in fruit or blossom. The tree will bear when 150 or 200 years old, while at Versailles there is a tree known to be over 400 years old, and older still is a tree at Nice that is fifty feet high and still bears 6,000 oranges a year. Its exact age is unknown but it is a product ot antiquity. The orange craze, as it has been called, is most alluring. The prospect, as viewed by the novice, is of Bitting down and waiting for the agent to come round yearly and buy the crop, yet constant work and attention are necessary. The orange grove requires to be irrigated, ploughed and weeded throughout the year, but the chief trouble lies in its various parasites. Five years ago a number of the groves of Southern California were almost ruined by the white scale. Orange men were in despair, and orchards worth thousands of dollars were literally given up to the destroyer and looked as if flecked with snow. The Government sent a Commissioner to Australia, who discovered a lady bug that proved an enemy to the white scale, and today the trees are again in tine condition. The white scale is unknown hero now, despite continual investigations and searches for it by the many local horticultural inspectors and associations.

Only once in thirteen years has the frost seriously damaged the Southern California orange crop. On Christmas eve in 1891 the mercury went down to 27 deg. above zero in nearly every part of this region, and remained there for several hours. When dawn came the growers knew they hud lost over half a million of dollars in damaged fruit. The oranges on the inner and protected branches of the trees escaped with little or no Injury. In that season Pomona Valley marketed $45,000 worth of oranges, whereas the amount would have been over $250,000 without the cold snap. Some of the statements of profits made by some of the old orchardists seem so absurdly largo that, if they they did not come from reliable and Erominent citizens, one would hardly elieve them. There is, however, positive proof that some of the ten and twelve year-old orange groves in Pomona Valley have, since they came into full bearing, when six years old, borne several crops of fruit that netted the grower $5 a tree, or SSOO an acre. A few orchards here have netted their owners over $650 an acre in some years, but the majority of bearing orange orchards in Southern California yield crops worth between $225 and SBOO an acre in an average year. One or two growers who have learned the art of growing the best fruit, and have packed it carefully themselves, have in several seasons got over S6OO per acre clear for investment and labor, The largest profit that can be relied upon yet reported in the Pomona Valley this season for oranges is that from the seventy-acre Rhorer orchard, which has borne a crop that was sold on the trees last week to a Chicago buyer for $22,000. The trees are nine years old, and have had unusual care. The property has cost to date between $85,000 and $90,000. These profits have created a most wonderful demand for orange land and trees. Thousands of acres that were formerly grain fields or unproductive of any crops, have been planted to groves since the great real estate boom bubble of 1887 burst. Two years ago the Pomona Progress estimated that nearly $4,000,000 was invested in one season in land, trees and labor for orange groves, the amount invested in trees alone being about $700,000. This season orange planting, and the purchase and preparation of land- for the same will probably run up toward $1,500,000. Riverside expects to add to its acreage by about 1,200 acres, Pomona by 900 acres, Pasadena by 600 acres, San Gabriel by 500 acres, Redlands by 600 acres and other localities about 800 acres. What especially pleases the grower is the fact in the last ten years* the consumption of oranges has increased 500 per cent, in this country and is on the increase. Not only this but rival and new roads have opened up a market for California fruit which it has not had in former years.—[New York Sun.