Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 July 1894 — A Future Fig Land. [ARTICLE]

A Future Fig Land.

“ California has a wonderful future before it in the cultivation of fruits, and the greatest source of its wealth in this connection will be, I believe, in the growing of figs,” said R. H. Martin who resides in Los Angeles, and has a promising plantation of young fig trees in Sonora, at Willard’s. “It is only recently that the Californians have learned the proper variety of figs to plant. Like most of our early fruits, the blue fig was found growing by the early settlers at the various missions, and for many years it was the only variety cultivated While excellent for home use, the blue fig was almost worthless as a dryer, and for some time the lack of any substitute led to the neglect of fig culture. Of late years, however, many varieties of the white fig have been introduced into California, notably the white Adriatic and the brown Smyrna, and these are fully equal to the imported article when dried or crystallized. There are ten million pounds of dried figs consumed in the United States every year, andthere is no reason in the world why California shouldn’t supply the entire demand. It is easy to realize what immense profits can be made in the cultivation of figs, when one welldeveloped tree will produce one thousand pounds of the fruit, after it is dried, which will command a price ofj six cents per pound, at least, in the market. Almost all soils and locations in Southern California, both in the valleys and on the foothills, are suitable to its cultivation, and I anticipate that within the next twenty years California will produce almost as large a crop of figs as gmyrna itself, which export? something like thirty million pounds of dried figs every year.—-[Washington Star.