ARIZONA CITRUS: THE INCOMPARABLE GOLDEN FRUIT

By ERNEST DOUGLAS Editor, Arizona Producer PERHAPS the loveliest sight to be viewed in Arizona, aside from her incomparable natural scenery, is any one of her thousands of citrus groves. The season does not matter. In spring the trees are covered with waxy white blossoms that perfume the air for miles around. In fall and winter the boughs bend under loads of golden fruit. On a bright summer day the glossy green leaves glisten like fairy wings in the sun. There is beauty, my friends, and peace and serenity. And if, as is usually the case, a mountain of tawny stone and purple shadows towers in the background, there breathes no man with soul so dead that his heart does not ache to spend the rest of his life amid such vistas of majesty and enchantment.

How many of the State's citizens have become adopted Arizonans because they could not resist the lure of our citrus orchards and idyllic existence they promise? We have no cold statistics on the point, as we have on acreage and production. It is a fact, though, that if one drives out into the orange and grapefruit belts of Salt River Valley, half the people living in those shade-bowered modern homes will say that they first came as mere passing visitors but stayed or returned because they could never again be content in more prosaic surroundings.

It is hard to write of Arizona citrus without dealing in superlatives that must IF ONE would grow citrus for fun, for profit, for the deep satisfaction of creating beauty, there is no place which will please him so well as Arizona. sound exaggerated to readers who have not themselves eaten our fruits, known the charm of our groves, experienced the fascination of an occupation which combines the aesthetic and practical values of life to a rare degree. Their beauty is the greatest, their fruit is the finest, their harvests are the most bounteous, pests are the fewest, costs are the lowest of any citrus-producing area.

Not that the Arizona citrus grower is any son of the gods entirely unbeset by troubles that afflict other lines of agriculture and horticulture. He does have to use his head and work hard to keep his trees bearing at capacity. Sometimes it gets cold enough to damage his crop. In the last three years he has often found it impossible to market his fruit at prices which will return interest on his investment. But the means of keeping trees in peak condition are at hand and not expensive. Frost comes infrequently and can be guarded against to a certain extent. Economic conditions in the Nation will eventually return to normal, we all hope. Production costs are so low that the Arizona citrus man can still make some profits while his competitors are losing money. So, if the worst comes to the worst, he will be the very last to go out of business.

Speaking of past profits, a survey made by the Salt River Valley Water Users' Association in 1928 showed that groves of all ages and varieties were then netting $525 an acre annually. They did as well in 1929, when a field box of grapefruit was worth $2.25 or more at the packing house and a box or oranges was worth $4. Hardly anyone expects to see such prices again; but great advances have been made in cultural methods since then and yields are so much higher that similar returns are possible when the buying power of the American consumer is restored.

It is hard to believe that the citrus tree, which originated in the humid jungles of Malay, finds its favorite home in arid Arizona, on lands which were desert until touched by the magic of irrigation. This is especially true of grapefruit. Oranges of the principal commercial varieties may bear more prolifically in certain districts of Florida and Texas; but grapefruit trees are nowhere so happy as in the Arizona soil under the Arizona sun. With reasonable care, a good individual will produce eight to ten boxes annually, and the usual spacing is 84 trees to the acre. No wonder growers say that if they can average twenty-five cents a box they are satisfied.

The beginnings of Arizona's citrus industry are less than half a century back of us. Although orange growing was a demonstrated success on the coast, it

A CHECKERBOARD OF ORANGE GROVES IN THE SALT RIVER VALLEY

"In fall and winter the boughs bend under loads of golden fruit. On a bright summer day the glossy green leaves glisten like fairy wings in the sun. There is beauty, my friend, and peace and serenity. And if, as is usually the case, a mountain of tawny stone and purple shadows towers in the background, there breathes no man with soul so dead that his heart does not ache to spend the rest of his life amid such vistas of majesty and enchantment."

was generally believed that the winters of Southern Arizona were too cold for trees supposed to succumb to freezing temperatures. One who did not hold to this belief was the grand old pioneer, W. J. Murphy. He visioned Salt River Valley as a checkerboard of orange groves, and in 1889 he took the first step toward transforming that vision into reality.

Defying the skeptics, he brought in nursery stock of miscellaneous varieties from California and planted twenty acres at Ingleside, nine miles northeast of Phoenix in the heart of the "Camelback area" which is today admitted to have soil and climatic conditions almost ideal for citrus.

That next winter, though, almost proved the skeptics right. There was a frost and many of the young trees, not wrapped as they would be nowadays, froze below the bud union. Later, however, these victims sent up sprouts from the roots; and since those roots were grown from sweet orange seeds, they eventually became producers of edible fruit. Mr. Murphy had a conglomeration of seeded grapefruit, Valencia, Navel and seedling orange trees. But they flourished, bore amazingly, made him money, and thoroughly exploded the climatic fallacy. That original grove, the trees rising thirty feet or more into the air, is still one of Arizona's most productive in point of volume.

What could be done in Salt River Valley could be done at Yuma, argued H. W. Blaisdell, and he proceeded to prove it with a grove in 1892. In 1896 and 1897 Mr. Murphy planted some 1300 acres, mostly in Central Avenue district north of Phoenix. Others followed his example.

Citrus growing in Arizona was on its way. Acreage was comparatively small, however, until the high prices of the late 20's brought rapid expansion.

Far-sighted persons had perceived that one of Arizona's principal advantages In citriculture was her freedom from the scales, spiders and other pests which force growers elsewhere to make heavy outlays for fumigation, spraying and dusting. In order to preserve this advantage, which meant better fruit produced at lower cost, all outside nursery stock was barred from the state by law, Fruit from Texas and Florida was excluded, that from California admitted only after passing inspection and being pronounced clean. These restrictions, tightened from time to time, are still in effect, with little likelihood that they will ever be relaxed. Since it was necessary to grow nursery stock at home, Arizona's big citrus planting boom was delayed until 1930. For the production of young trees suitable for setting out in a grove takes at least three years, is a matter of infinite patience and care if the productivity of our groves and the high quality of their fruits are to be maintained.

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