CALIFORNIA CAROB POSSIBILITIES
The geographic possibilities for carob culture in California seem to me to be excellent. The carob grows in orange climate. California has a large area with orange climate. As a thermal belt above the frosty valley floors it stretches for a great distance along the eastern edge of the Great Valley. It also rings around much of the shore and lowland between San Francisco and San Diego. Please note that I am speaking of orange climate (temperature). Since the orange trees are water hogs and California is a land of almost rainless summer, the orange can only be grown where irrigation is possible. Naturally this is but a small fraction of the land with orange temperature. Therefore, the major part of California land having orange temperature cannot become orange land, but much of it may become carob land, since this tree can survive and even bear a light crop in the rainless summer. Sample plantings years ago have proved that the carob will thrive over an area much larger than the possible orange area. [1]
- ↑ University of California publications, The Carob in California, by I. J. Condit, Bulletin No. 309, June 1919, says:
"Experience has shown that the trees when young are no hardier than orange trees. When once established, however, the carob is more frost-resistant than the orange. . . . Even if the blossoms escape injury from cold and rain, the developing fruit is liable to be killed by frost later on. For this reason the successful production of carob pods is practically limited to the citrus belts along the foothills. The carob tree thrives in regions of intense heat, such as the Imperial and Coachella valleys where the winters are mild."
Mr. G. P. Rixford, Physiologist at U. S. Department of Agriculture Field Station, Crop Physiology and Breeding Investigations, San Francisco, California, said in a letter of February 6, 1917, "It frequently happens that the flowers which are produced in late fall or early winter are destroyed by frost, which does not affect the tree itself but prevents its fruiting.
the ocean and is a heavy soil, but is probably not over two hundred feet elevation above sea level. It is about three miles to the ocean front.
"The remark about being grassed over may need this explanation, namely, that the grass is green only through the winter and early spring, while at this time of the year it is brown and apparently dead."
Mr. Beers had published a similar summary in the California Cultivator of April 9, 1914.
