thank you so much for your insights today. >> the civil war airs every saturday between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. eastern time. c-span.org/history. you are watching american history tv, all weekend every weekend on c-span3. >> all weekend long american history tv is joining our comcast cable partners to showcase the history of santa rosa california. visit c-span.org/cities to her. we continue with a look at the history of santa rosa. >> i think visitors find most

interesting that they have been exposed to burbank's red without ever knowing there was a person behind it. sometimes people take for granted how we have acquired things. >> we are at the luther burbank home and gardens. he was able to introduce or create over 800 varieties of fruits, trees, nuts and flowers. some he imported from different countries and was the first to introduce in the u.s.. one of the first words he ever heard was california. outad two brothers who came for the gold rush. when he got old enough he decided he wanted to focus on new plans for people.

this is where he ended up after wandering around for a year. we have about an acre and a half here. he had more than five acres. 's originale burbank home, a house he built in the 1880's. the home is set up as a house museum. it includes furnishing and memorabilia his widow left the city of santa rosa. she was self-taught horticulturist. generally he announced himself with his work. produced a catalog

called new creations in fruit and flowers. he said keep this catalog because the contents will become standards of excellence. in doing so he had announced he created new plans. it was a controversial idea at the time. mr. burbank thought of himself as an inventor. plants byo create new using his wits. he was able to produce things no one had ever seen before. across between a plum and an apricot. a spineless cap -- spineless cactus. one of the most important plums economically and california. it is used as a pollinator plum.

>> we are looking at trees that are almond rootstocks. this tree has been grafted with an apricot, peach, and nectarine, a plum. we call it our fruit salad of tree. crafting is when you take one tree with rootstocks and you put another variety on top of it. toot of times people do that , or ifes to fruit sooner the top of the tree had some sort of disease susceptibility. he started doing this because somebody wanted 20,000 trees. everybody said it couldn't be done. luther got 20,000 almond pits and then grafted prudence on top

of them and was able to deliver 19,500 of them. >> now we are in the greenhouse. they built this greenhouse in 1885 so he could grow plants here. the mortar mix between the bricks and the father recommended. this greenhouse survived the 1906 earthquake. that is of course according to mr. burbank. he wrote that in the letter to officials of the carnegie institute, because they wanted to make sure his experience were continuing, because he was getting a $10,000 per year grant to write up his work for the benefit of mankind.

luther burbank has been here since the 1880's -- luther burbank's safe has been here since the 1880's. so he could here pay his workers each day and ensure they worked very hard for him for cash. he called his products horticultural novelties. the first, soand he wanted to be the first to bring them to market. seedseone else took his and was able to introduce them worst he wouldn't have that claim. his plants were unable to be patented during his lifetime, so he had a worry they weren't truly his, he couldn't claim them if someone else took the seeds. spineless burbank's cactus. we have seven different varieties. his main goal was to make it a

forage caught -- forage crop for cattle in desert regions. it was considered one of his failures. they would eat it too rapidly. he would rub them on his face. would end of the day he use a razor to shave off the sticky rolls -- the sticky estate of his face. they can be quite irritating. stickules that stayed in his face. they can be quite irritating. willen you come here you see different exhibits in our museum. generally we have this large picture on display, which is a picture of the day thomas edison and henry ford came to visit lisa burbank.

ford wanted to come because they want to see these great things burbank had. they shared a similar strategies in doing their work. mr. ford was inventive and creative. they walked among the gardens together. mr. burbank showed him his own methods of mass production. henry ford was around his mass production line. version was to bring thousands of plants so he could find the few that had mutations and the use those mutations to develop new plans for his work. -- it was the meeting of three geniuses. mr. edison and shared similar methods. they were more of trial and error.

the teat of men were contemporary and similar in age. although mr. edison was able to , he and burbank were both inventors and their own way. ford and edison were impressed and creditedank this visit with helping to inspire them to create the horticultural preserve that they created in florida. they created their own experiment garden to try to rubber the first type of that could be produced in the u.s. to produce tires for ford and edison worked for many years. hewas unsuccessful and said

had no idea how burbank came up with even one plan successfully. it was the hardest thing he had ever done. >> during world war ii luther burbank was responsible for spearheading one of the responsible -- one of the original concepts for the victory garden, people could grow in their own yard without commercial agriculture. he was -- it was in the beat family and comes from south america. flower you see has the seed in them that people use for eating. we receive seeds from this every year to grow again. it doesn't require a lot of space. you get a lot of seed production

per flower head. it only takes two or three of .hese to make a good size meal fama at the time patents were not available for plants, people thought plants were created by nature or god, not by people. eye.e don't bat an those things in the market place that took years to develop. one of the grandparents of the uat is the kumquat. coming here really gives you a sense of that history. it also gives you a sense of community in santa rosa and burbank as a person, who helped to promote