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Clean, white Croft lily bulbs—once a dull yellow—that are now coming from the soil give evidence of a great change in growth, productivity, and quality of Easter lilies, that influences the practices of field growers, brokers and forcers and produces better flowering plants.

Cultivated safflower — Carthamus tinctorius L.—was established in California as a commercial crop in 1950 and by 1956, approximately 84,000 acres were in production. Most of the acreage was in the Sacramento Valley but it is likely that the total acreage will increase because there is a good market for safflower oil.

Maleic hydroxide — MH-40—effectively reduces storage losses of potatoes and onions but little use has been made of it as a growth regulator in potato growing in California.

Commercial size spray thinning trials with naphthylacetamide—Amid Thin—in 1956 and 1957 indicated that the material can satisfactorily thin Newtown apples, does not injure foliage, reduces hand thinning costs and can result in a better return bloom the following year.

Pelleting alfalfa hay for livestock reduces the bulk and transforms the hay into a free flowing form like grain and cuts labor requirements for handling.

The use of aircraft to apply herbicides in the control of chamise and associated brush species—as a follow-up to controlled burning and seeding—was studied on a chamise dominated area. The test site was at a 1,400′ elevation in the foothills of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada, about 10 miles west of Placerville.

The intensity of the filbertworm infestation of walnuts in northern California in 1957 was less than in the peak year of 1954, but it marked the fourth straight year that the filbertworm has presented a problem. Based on past history the 1957 attack was surprising because observations have indicated that the pest would not continue at a highly destructive level over a period of several years.

Irrigation practices and mowing heights were found to affect invasion of turf by weedy grasses in a two-year study conducted at Davis involving 36 test plots and nine combinations of treatment, replicated four times.

The dark-sided cutworm — Euxoa messoria (Harris)—causes yearly economic damage to asparagus grown in the delta area.

The following article is the fourth of a series of reports of a survey of characteristics of and services offered by retail grocery stores in five counties in California made cooperatively by the Department of Home Economics, University of California, and the United States Department of Agriculture under the authority of the Research and Marketing Act as part of Western Regional Research Project WM-26.