Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting / Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952

by Unknown

MONDAY EVENING SESSION

Called to order at 7:20 p.m.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: We will call on Dr. McKay as chairman of the
Nominating Committee to present the slate of officers for the next year.
Dr. McKay.

DR. MCKAY: Mr. Chairman, the Nominating Committee, as you know, is charged with the responsibility of selecting a slate of officers that will be presented to the meeting.

The committee, composed of myself as chairman, Mr. Allaman, Mr. Silvis, Mr. Ford Wilkinson and Mr. Gerardi, have the following slate of officers for next year: For president, Mr. R. B. Best; for vice-president, Mr. George Salzer of Rochester; for secretary, Mr. Spencer Chase; for treasurer, Mr. Carl Prell.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: You have heard the report of the Nominating Committee. At this time we will entertain further nominations from the floor, if any.

The only action to be taken now is to accept the report of the
Nominating Committee. Do I hear such a motion?

The motion to accept the report was moved, seconded and carried.

Going on with the program of the evening, are you ready to show the film?

MR. MCDANIEL: The film comes to us from the Northwest Nut Growers now located in Portland, Oregon. They are an organization for marketing filberts, and you will see, "The Filbert Valleys", the title. I haven't seen it myself and don't know exactly what the contents are. We will look at it now and judge for ourselves.

The film, "The Filbert Valleys", was shown.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: We appreciate very much your running it.

The next item will be our discussion of filbert varieties and their culture. Mildred Jones, who was to be here, could not come. She telephoned the last minute that she was ill and could not be with us. I have asked George Slate to be the moderator in the discussion, with his panel, D. C. Snyder, Raymond Silvis, A. M. Whitford, Louis Gerardi and H. F. Stoke.

MR. SLATE: I just learned when I arrived here that I was to be on this discussion group, and I learned a few minutes ago that I was to lead it, so I can assure you that this is wholly unrehearsed, and I may have to flounder around a bit before we get things running smoothly.

I thought I might review the variety situation rather briefly. We have done quite a lot of variety testing of filberts at Geneva; in fact, about the only nut cultural work we have done at Geneva has been the filbert project. We started out with about 25 or 30 varieties that we secured from American nurseries, many of them from a firm in Rochester which imported them from Germany. Later we added varieties from England, France and Germany. I picked up nearly all the varieties that I could locate until we had about 120 varieties growing there at Geneva. These were there for some years, and it became evident that many of them were not of great value. Then we had a hard winter in 1933 and 1934, and although it did not kill the trees, most of them were blackhearted and began going back soon after that. However, I felt at that time that I knew enough about the varieties to discard most of them. Many of them were discarded because they had poor nuts, many of them were unproductive, and many of them lacked hardiness of catkins. I laid a great deal of emphasis on the hardiness of catkins in testing the varieties.

Out of that variety test were three varieties which we considered to be most satisfactory of the lot. These were Cosford, an English variety, rather a small nut but very thin-shelled. The catkins were hardy and one of the heavier croppers of the lot. Medium Long, a nut which I believe originated as a seedling in Rochester, was another one, and Italian Red, which later proved to be Gustav's Zellernuss, a German variety, was another.

As a result of that variety test it became evident that varieties from Germany, many of which originated in the colder portions of Germany and Northern Germany, were distinctly more hardy than the varieties that we got from French sources and English sources. In some of the proceedings of the Association published during the '30's I have reported on the different varieties and their hardiness and those varieties that I thought were most valuable. I don't recall the names of many of those German varieties. These three varieties which we consider the best of the lot were turned over to the New York Fruit Testing Association to propagate and distribute, because they were not available from American nurseries. I am not sure how many of them were available from other sources, but they are still available from the Fruit Testing Association.

Then out of that variety test a grading project developed. We got our start from about 500 seedlings that Clarence Reed sent us in the early '30's. We made crosses there at Geneva, using the Rush variety of Corylus americana as the seed parent in many cases. We also made some crosses between Corylus avellana varieties, and with these seedlings from Mr. Reed and seedlings of our own crossing, we have grown about 2,000 filbert seedlings there at Geneva. These have all been evaluated and discarded, except possibly 30 or 35 selections still on hand, some of them being propagated for a second test planting. Stock of one or two has been turned over to the Fruit Testing Association for increase and eventual naming and introduction.

The work of the United States Department of Agriculture was along similar lines. Mr. Reed did not send us all of his seedlings. A number of them were fruited at Beltsville, and from that work at Beltsville I believe two varieties have been named, Reed and Potomac. I am not sure whether they are available yet from commercial sources.

MR. MCDANIEL: Two of them are.

MR. SLATE: Mr. Graham of Ithaca, a long-time member of this Association and very much interested in filberts, had also made some crosses and raised several hundred seedlings. He used the Winkler variety as a seed parent. I believe he raised some seedlings of the Jones hybrids, which would make that material second generation stock from the original cross between Rush and the avellana varieties.

Mr. Graham's planting was in rather a cold area; he had considerable winter killing. Eventually filbert blight got into his planting, and it really cleaned house. There were a very few seedlings in his planting which remained free of filbert blight. I think it is a fairly safe guess to say that they were probably very resistant to blight. So far these have not been propagated to any extent.

There are a few cultural problems. The ones that we have encountered at Geneva have been winter injury, particularly of the catkins, and also some of them have not been as hardy in wood as we would like. We have had no trouble with filbert blight, presumably because we are isolated from the wild hazel, which harbors this blight. Dr. MacDaniels has had trouble with his planting at Ithaca with filbert mite.

With this introduction, which is mostly varieties and breeding, because that seems to be my interest, I'd like to call on some members of the panel to get their experiences. Mr. Snyder raises nut trees in Iowa where winter injury is probably much more serious than we have at Geneva. At Geneva we have a fairly respectable climate and can get a crop of peaches about nine years out of ten. In Iowa they have a lot more sunshine, and I think probably sharper drops of temperature than we have at Geneva. I'd like to have Mr. Snyder tell us what his experiences have been with filbert varieties.

MR. SNYDER: I really didn't know that I was to be on this panel until I got here. I thought I was on the hickory panel. As Mr. Slate says, our climate is more severe that that at Geneva. We can get the very hardiest peaches to bear about two years out of three, and the trees are severely injured in between. So that will give you a little idea as to the climate in that respect.

We made quite a planting at one time, maybe 30 of the Jones hybrids, and they did quite well for several years, and then between the winter-killing and the blight most of them are dead now. The Winkler, of course, is an Iowa nut and was introduced by our people and did very well for a number of years but has backed out on us the last several years, too, I believe due to this same mite trouble that Dr. MacDaniels reports in New York. They just don't bear. The bushes are quite healthy, and we get plenty of catkins, but we don't get any nuts to amount to anything.

We have a little bush of the Mandchurian hazel. It isn't worth mentioning as a nut producer, but it does have very attractive foliage and seems to be entirely healthy, produces perhaps three to five nuts a year on a bush as high as your head. You may be familiar with it. The foliage is very distinct from anything I know. The leaves are truncate at the end, cut off quite square, with just a little point in the middle.

MR. SLATE: I don't have that.

MR. SNYDER: That is standing our conditions all right, and several years ago Mr. Reed sent us what he said at the time were Chinese tree hazels, but later he retracted and said that they were not Chinese tree hazels but they were hybrids of the Chinese tree hazel. There were four of those plants; one of them was a tremendous grower. It would grow six feet or more a year and commence bearing in a year or two. But the blight hit it and cleaned it out. There is only one left now, one of the slower-growing ones, and while it promises to become a tree, it is a very irregular-growing one. I think it had half a dozen nuts on this year.

The Turkish tree hazel, of which I have two trees, were very badly damaged by a very severe hailstorm 12 or 15 years ago, which completely peeled off the bark on one side. That was in early July, and we were afraid to cut them off and let them grow up new for fear it would kill them. They have finally developed into quite beautiful upright trees. Also they have more than one stem from the bottom. One of them produces a great abundance of catkins, but neither of them has produced any nuts yet, and they are 14 feet high or more, good-sized trees and very attractive. The foliage is very beautiful, and it remains healthy. I don't know that there are any other varieties that I can name.

MR. SLATE: We have had several of the Turkish tree hazels, Corylus colurna, growing at Geneva for two or three years. They came from the Rochester State Park. We have one tree which Mr. Bixby imported from China, as Corylus chinensis, but recently I had it checked by Dr. Lawrence of the Bailey Hortorium and he assured me that it was Corylus colurna. I think these make a very handsome tree. I like that rough, corky bark they have as they get older. The trees in Highland Park at Rochester are the largest, perhaps, in the country, certainly the largest that I know anything about. They are at least as large as a very large apple tree. They have been fruiting for some years. The trees at Geneva have not fruited very much. I don't think you can expect much in the way of nuts until the tree is about 15 years old. This year one of our trees has a number of nuts on it. The nuts are too small and too thick-shelled to be of any great value for nuts.

Now, Mr. Whitford, you have had some experience with the filbert varieties. Which one would you recommend?

MR. WHITFORD: I haven't had a whole lot of experience with the filberts, but we had some of the old varieties, like Barcelona and DuChilly, and they didn't bear many nuts, and eventually they went out with blight. And we have some of the Potomac and Reed, about five years old, and they don't bear well as yet. I don't know what the outcome is going to be on the Potomac and Reed. They make a nice ornamental bush, anyway, and that's about the sum and substance of my experience with filberts.

MR. SLATE: The Barcelona and DuChilly at Geneva have not been very satisfactory. During the first two years Barcelona outyielded the other varieties, but as the trees became older they experienced winter injury. DuChilly or Kentish Cob makes a small tree, but the nut is about the best of the nuts. There is a German variety not in circulation in this country, Langsdorfer, which is much like DuChilly, but it seems to make a much better tree. I think if they were put into circulation it might be a good substitute here in the East for DuChilly variety.

Let's hear from you, Mr. Gerardi. I know you are testing filbert varieties now.

MR. GERARDI: Yes, I have DuChilly and Kentish Cob. So far, at our place we have no blight or mite damage to speak of. The original plantings were the Bixby and Buchanan. We have them yet, and they are still as healthy as the day we put them out. They show no damage; even the Winkler hazel has had no damage or disease. It may be the soil, although we have them on high ground and low ground both. Among the newer ones this year the Reed has the most on. The Potomac, though it is the strongest grower of the two, has less nuts. Although it appeared to me that the catkins were all killed in February of this year, still we have some nuts. The Jones hybrids, when the catkins are killed, have very few, if any nuts. Some years we have a crop, if some of the catkins are held back and bloom late. Winter killing in February before they have had a chance to pollinate, has been our main trouble. If we could get a variety that this wouldn't bother, we'd have what we are looking for.

MR. MCDANIEL: The Winkler will bloom for you almost every year. Doesn't the Winkler hold its catkins most years?

MR. GERARDI: Yes, sir, I'd say at our place the Winkler has never failed entirely. Even though the catkins are killed, they still bear quite regularly.

MR. MCDANIEL: I can say that for it at Urbana.

MR. WHITFORD: The catkins might have been killed, but you might have had some cross-pollination from other sources.

MR. GERARDI: There is a chance of that, of course. There is a wild hazel within a quarter of a mile, but apparently the wild hazel bloomed first. They were on a south slope and naturally came out first. I tried to keep them on the north slope, or on the cool side of any particular planting, because if you can hold them back more, you have got a better chance. If you plant them on the south side, you rarely get anything.

MR. SLATE: The hybrids bloom later than the avellana varieties, and they mature nuts later. Is that your experience?

MR. GERARDI: That's true, I will admit your hybrids are a little later blooming, because your American hazel nuts around our place bloom very early, sometimes in January in full bloom.

MR. SLATE: C. avellana starts blooming in March and blooms for about a month. Some years when you have had considerable open weather, they have bloomed as early as the middle of February. They will, of course, stand considerable freezing when they are in bloom.

As regards the pollination, I believe about all the information we have is the work that was done at the Oregon Experiment Station a number of years ago. All of the varieties tried were self-unfruitful or self-incompatible. The term, "self-sterile" is often used, but I think it is a little more exact to say self-unfruitful or self-incompatible. They are not sterile, because the pistillate flowers are normal and so is the pollen produced by the staminate flowers. It's just a question of inability of the pollen to fertilize the pistillate flowers on the same variety.

We know nothing about the pollination requirements of any of these Corylus avellana or Corylus americana hybrids. We do know that when the cross is made that the Corylus americana variety must be the seed-parent. The cross doesn't work the other way around. That's about all we know about the cross-pollination of these filberts.

MR. SAWYER: We have had them to bloom in April or the first week in May.

MR. SLATE: The seedlings?

MR. SAWYER: The seedlings.

MR. SLATE: What is the origin of the seedlings?

MR. SAWYER: They are the natives.

MR. SLATE: The native C. rostrata, or C. cornuta to some botanists, it seems to me has nothing that we want in the way of a nut, if we can possibly grow these other varieties, the americana selections or the hybrids. It's a miserable little nut with that long, prickly husk. It's very difficult to get the nut out of it. For that reason, I have never been very much interested in it.

MR. SAWYER: How is the Ryan?

MR. MCDANIEL: Mr. Gellatly out in British Columbia has named several hybrids between avellana and the Corylus cornuta. Have you seen it?

MR. SLATE: No, I haven't seen it.

MR. MCDANIEL: They described them in their catalog.

MR. COLBY: I have preference for the Winkler hazel, as you know. I bought and put them in the greenhouse several years ago and shook the pollen on the pistils and got a full set. So I felt that was self-fruitful.

MR. SLATE: That was pretty good evidence, then, that it was self-fruitful.

Now, Mr. Silvis, you raise nut trees, and the climate is somewhat like that in Western New York, perhaps a little milder in the winter. What have you to say about the filbert varieties?

MR. SILVIS: It's Warmer, and in spite of all the statistics of previous gentlemen, I find that avellana types which I had growing in my back yard three years ago produced pollen on January the 25th. It was unseasonably warm. It was 70 degrees, and most of the pollen was dispersed. And this year I found the wild hazel pollen much later than the early types, due to the different situation. The wild ones which I had seen were growing in semi shade under tall trees, and my bushes and plants are growing in the back yard south of our house. And I think I have the largest planting in the State of Ohio, about two dozen plants, and I am in production.

Besides numerous seedlings, I have the following varieties: Italian Red, Cosford, Medium Long, DuChilly. They are in bearing. Italian Red and DuChilly planted together, I believe, are good for one another for the production of nice filbert nuts. I have, from scion wood you sent me several years ago, Cosford, and now on their own roots Neue Riesenuss, and what I thought the tag said, not "Langsdorfer," but Langsberger.

MR. SLATE: There is a Langsdorfer, and I think there is another variety which Langsberg is part of the name. I am not sure, I will have to look that up.

MR. SILVIS: Well, I have it as Langsberger. I have shown last evening the picture of Harry L. Pierce's orchard at Willamette in Oregon, or in Salem, Oregon. I have one of his trees with staminate blooms only, no pistillate blooms. But I also have what Fayette Etter in Pennsylvania calls his Royal, and I just cannot get two fellows together with paper and pencil to determine whether those two Royals are the same, but I am hoping to find out whether the two Royals are identical. I had Fayette Etter find me scion wood, and now I have it growing as a graft and layered on its own roots.

I think you people do yourselves an injustice by not learning to graft and learning to work with the filbert. You only have to have three compatible plants. If you have more, you will have more nuts. I see no reason why anyone who owns a city lot cannot grow filberts. They are much easier to take care of, and you are not going to prejudice the plant by having it associate with its wild cousin, and I think you will find a lot of enjoyment in the filbert bush.

MR. SLATE: What variety do you think is best? What two or three would you plant?

MR. SILVIS: For eating I like DuChilly, and the catkin is hardy with me, and I am between the 40th and 41st parallel. I'd say anyone who lives from Iowa to the East Coast within one hundred miles north or south of the 40th parallel should have the same luck that I have. And as to a group planting, I would suggest, as you recommended to me when we first started out the Medium Long, Cosford and Italian Red. If you want only two bushes, Italian Red and DuChilly will work well together.

MR. MCDANIEL: Do you have Medium Long?

MR. SILVIS: Yes, I do.

MR. MCDANIEL: Is that doing well?

MR. SILVIS: I don't think it fruits as well as Cosford or DuChilly.
That's been my experience. My DuChilly was plastered with nuts last year
and this year, and I believe it's due to the Italian Red which New York
Fruit Testing Laboratory sold me.

MR. SLATE: Thank you.

MR. WHITFORD: Do you fertilize those bushes?

MR. SILVIS: Due to the fact I have started to mulch with sawdust I have been using nitrate and rock phosphate, so my teeth don't fall out when I chew them.

MR. SLATE: I crack mine with a hand cracker, I don't crack them with my teeth.

DR. COLBY: Mr. Chairman, we can grow filberts. How does the chairman keep the squirrels from eating them?

MR. STOKE: I will tell you that.

MR. SLATE: Mr. Stoke raises his nut trees in the Sunny South, and he has problems down there that we don't have up north. I think he has to worry a lot more about winter killing than we do way up north where we are in Central New York. What's been your experience with some of the varieties and what are your principal cultural problems with the filberts?

MR. STOKE: I wish to answer Dr. Colby's query about squirrels. I find that squirrels are very highly allergic to these BB caps or the CP caps used in a 22 rifle. It works. In my back yard there is a Brixnut filbert, which originated in Oregon. I guess it's been there 15 years. There are four trunks to it, the largest about 16 inches in diameter. One of those I grafted to Giant, as a pollinizer for Brixnut. It's similar in shape, somewhat smaller in spite of its name, but it's pretty effective. Then about ten years ago there was an old gentleman from Halsey, Oregon. I don't know whether any of you have corresponded with him or not. He bought the Breslau Persian walnut—I pretty nearly said the English walnut, and I'd have been disgraced—and furnished me scions and I got a start of it from him. Russ sent me some scions from a filbert he called Jumbo. You will see it out on the table there. It's rather a long nut, little larger than DuChilly and not quite so flat, that I grafted in there. It absolutely is hopeless as a pollinizer for anything, because it loses its staminate blossoms by Christmas. But the Hall's Giant pollinizes them, and it's the best filbert I have, all things considered. This year off that one scion—of course, it's four inches in diameter—I got about 7 quarts of nuts, and they began ripening at least three weeks ago, and the crop is all off now. And the foliage is unusually heavy, almost in clusters, and it drops cleanly and freely from the husks, and I think it is a very nice filbert. Whether it's a recognized variety in the West I have no idea, and I haven't corresponded with the old gentleman for some years, and he probably has passed on by this time, because he was an elderly man and not in good health at the time I had my correspondence with him. I consider that an excellent filbert, and I think anyone wishing to plant filberts should investigate with the Oregon nurseries or Washington nurseries and see if that is a recognized variety. I tried to find out once and failed so far. I do not have it on its own roots. I hope that I will have it rooted in another year.

In my back yard also I have one that I bought in Oregon. That's as tall as up to that beam, maybe almost to the ceiling, very vigorous growth, larger nut than Longfellow, thicker nuts and also longer. But I think the thing he sold me was a graft and the graft died and this came from the root. It bears very sparingly, but it's a very large nut, and I wondered why it was always so spare, and I caught it blooming in December, staminate blossoms in December this year. So that's that.

Ten miles east of my home, east of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the granitic, very heavy clay soil of what we call the Piedmont down there, I have a planting that was made 15 years ago of filberts, some on their own roots and some that I grew on the Turkish tree hazel stocks. Those grew well, and the main advantage was they put up no suckers. You had a nice clean trunk, and you didn't have that problem of getting rid of the sprouts all the time. And it looked very good for a while.

I find where you graft that way, the stocks get old and do not renew themselves, and eventually the life will be shorter than if you had a shrub that might last for a century, when you are renewing your stalks when they reach maturity and cease to grow enough to be productive.

Two years ago I had most of the standard varieties you mentioned here in that planting, about three-quarters or perhaps an acre planted in between chestnut trees. Planted the chestnut trees 40 feet apart and then interplanted with the filberts at 20 feet. Two years ago we had an unusually wet season, and the blight, of which I had had some before, hit hard and virtually ruined the whole planting. And in addition to that, we have leaf miner. It's an insect that lays a tiny egg in the leaf and develops a little larva or worm that eats out the chlorophyll between the two membranes of the leaf, just hollows it out and makes unsightly spots in there and, of course, kills that portion of the leaf. But the blight, known as the eastern filbert blight, according to Mr. Gravatt, has just ruined that planting. Some of the trees have been killed outright, and most of the tops are either dead or dying. This year the blight wasn't apparently active on the living part, because it was very dry up until the first of August, and since then it's been very wet. That's what happened to my filberts there.

Now, in that same location I have some younger, second-generation or third-generation plantings that I grew from scions from the Jones hybrids and so far those have not been attacked by the blight and not much by the leaf miner. I used them to replace some of the others that had died several years ago, so they are right in there together. About the best I have of those are also on exhibit out there and marked as the Jones Hybrid.

At the same time I put out some seedling Colurna or the Turkish tree hazel in that same plot. They were attacked somewhat but not badly by the blight. Today you'd never know they had any blight. They look healthy, and as has already been said, they make a beautiful tree. And if you want an avenue of trees on a drive that don't spread too wide and run up like Lombardi poplar, they'll beat Lombardi poplar all to pieces. And if you crowd them a little, they will grow up like a spire and retain their branches, so you really have a tree.

There was one in the J. F. Jones yard at Lancaster that I think was at least 14 inches in trunk diameter 20 years ago when I saw it. Do you know whether that is still there at the Jones place, that Turkish tree hazel, Mrs. Weber?

MRS. WEBER: Where is it located?

MR. STOKE: It's right near the house, it seems to me between the house and the side near the barn.

DR. MCKAY: Mr. Stoke, that tree is gone. We were there last fall.

MR. STOKE: But it was a very nice tree, and for shade it's very nice. The Manchurian hazel has been spoken of, and I might mention that, because I have dabbled in everything, I guess. I got seed from the University of Nanking along with some other things, and those seedlings were quite variable. The nuts compared rather favorably with the American hazel. Some were thick-shelled, but they will average almost as good as the American hazel, and they bore quite freely for me until I let the bushes get right thick. They will send out suckers and make a very spreading growth. If you dig them out and leave a piece of root in the ground, it will come up just like sassafras or persimmon will on that piece of root. But it is an attractive bush, and mine has a reddish-brown little spot in the middle of the leaf in most cases. It seems to be characteristic of that strain that I have. The nuts were quite variable and, as I say, they bore right well until I let them get too thick. I believe that's all.

MR. SLATE: I neglected to answer your question, Dr. Colby, but the squirrels have not been much of a problem with our filberts at Geneva, strange as it may seem. They have never taken a very high percentage of the crop. We have a Lancaster heartnut, and they clean up every nut on that tree every year before the end of August.

I'd like to comment on this matter of the name of Halle's Giant, I think you called it. I think the name is Halle, the German town where the variety originated. I prefer the name Halle, because calling it Hall's Giant is more or less a sign its origin is a man named Hall.

MR. STOKE: In some catalogs it is one way and some the other.

MR. SLATE: We have other items on the program tonight, and as the Latin student said, "Tempus is fugiting very fast," so I think we had better turn the meeting back to Dr. MacDaniels.

PRESIDENT MACDANIELS: The next two talks have slides to be shown, and it is suggested that you take about ten minutes, take a stretch and then come back when the slide projector is set up.

My Experiences With Chinese Chestnuts

W. J. WILSON, Fort Valley, Ga.

When I was asked to appear on this program to tell my experiences as a grower of chestnuts, I felt like a child, appearing before a group of grown-ups to tell them how to make marriage succeed. When I see the sages of chestnut knowledge seated before me I realize that I can only relate my experiences and ask your advice.

My father was a pioneer peach and pecan grower; he loved trees and has told me time after time that if I ever made more than just a living, farming, it would have to come from trees, not row crops. He was what I would call a self-educated man. He had small chance of formal education, being the sickly son, one of eight sons and three daughters, of a couple who eked out an existence on the poor, unproductive, sandy, soils of Crawford County, Georgia, growing the one and only cash crop of those days, cotton. The combined wages of these boys often amounted to more cash money than their own cotton crop returned because the supplier got most of the money from their own crop. They helped neighbors pick out their cotton crops after finishing their own. Grandfather must have liked to experiment in his limited way. Each spring as Grandfather would plant his small patch of Spanish peanuts and yellow corn, Grandmother would tongue-lash him, saying, 'so long as you fool away your time with Spanish peanuts and yellow corn you will remain a poor man. Time has proven Grandfather right and Grandmother wrong. Spanish peanuts is a huge industry; most of our hybrid corns, which have added millions of bushels to our yields are yellow.

My father wasted his time back at the turn of the century planting a peach orchard on his best cotton land. He planted pecans each winter, beginning about 1912, often to the ribbing of friends who still worshipped at the feet of King Cotton. One told him that he had a pecan tree or two about his home and the damn flying squirrels ate all of the nuts. Another told him that if he wanted a load of stove wood he would just as soon cut down a pecan tree as any other kind. At his death in 1942, my father had planted six hundred acres of pecan orchards, each acre having been interplanted with peaches, to produce income while the pecans were reaching bearing age.

I give you this background so that you may better understand my attitude toward chestnut growing. The scale on which I have set out on chestnut growing I know to some of you will seem rather bold or foolhardy.

About ten years ago I found that the U. S. D. A. Pecan Experiment Station at Albany, Georgia had a small chestnut orchard. Max Hardy, was doing the chestnut work and was so much interested in them that I caught fire and have been burning ever since. When I found that the harvest came between the peach harvest and the pecan harvest it fitted right into my kind of farming. The fact, that it was a possible tree crop made chestnut growing still more attractive to me. Max suggested that I join the N. N. G. A. when I complained that I couldn't find much information on chestnuts. I attended my first convention at Norris. I have tried to make most of them since that time. Of all the discussions at the Norris meeting, the one that stuck in my mind was whether nurseries should recommend seedlings or grafted trees. I thought then, and still think, that for commercial production one must have varieties, because seedlings are so variable. I believe, that when, chestnut growing comes of age, the major part of the production will go through processing plants. It will be a great advantage to have nuts of uniform quality and size, which is and will be impossible with seedlings.

Of the fifteen trees that I planted in 1946, only one fruited in 1951. It bore only 3-1/4 pounds of nuts. The other fourteen did not fruit. This year there are a few scattering burs at seven years of age, on those that I did not graft this spring. I am now too old to wait seven or eight years for a chestnut tree to begin bearing. These trees came from a Virginia nursery. The trees I planted in 1947, I started grafting in 1950, to Nanking, Meiling, and Kuling, and finished this spring, except for a few replants. I also grafted ten trees in 1950 to Abundance. These tops bore the second year, several bearing good burs the same year the scions were set. These grafted trees are anxious to go to work, because they bloom in the spring and again in late July and early August. I have used the in-lay bark, modified cleft, the cleft, and what I call a saddle graft, bevelling two sides of the stock and splitting the scion, thus slipping the split scion down over the prepared stock. I have had equally good take on all types of grafts used. In 1948 I planted two hundred seedlings bought from Max Hardy, grown from seed from the Experiment Station orchard. I believe the production record of this orchard has been given to this convention at previous meetings. You will recall that the off-type trees were rogued, leaving the parent trees of Nanking, Kuling and Meiling and others of good bearing habits. In 1951 four trees out of this lot, were outstanding in precocity. The earliest started dropping nuts the fifteenth of August and bore 7-1/4 pounds. The next matured September 5th and produced 8-1/2 pounds. The third tree is unusual. I noticed it the 4th of October. The ground was covered with nuts, but only an occasional bur. All of the burs were wide open and still on the tree. The crop weighed 6-1/2 pounds. The fourth tree I found on the 5th of October with all of its nuts on the ground, the tree retaining the burs. The yield of this tree was 4-1/2 pounds. Mind you, this was the fourth summer after planting. These trees have repeated this year with another good heavy crop. The other trees in this block bore from none to one or two pounds of nuts in 1951. This year less than ten trees in the block are not bearing. Next spring these ten will be growing new tops, because their present tops are not satisfactory. I noticed that one tree in this block bloomed long after the rest this spring, several weeks in fact. It might have possibilities in northern areas because of its late blooming.

Of the eleven hundred trees planted in 1950, one bore nuts in 1951. I didn't know it until this spring, when I was pruning the trees in this block, and found nuts on the ground under this tree. It is bearing a good crop this year for its size and age. There are a number of these trees bearing this year. Dr. Crane in a hurried inspection of these trees this summer thought those trees bearing were offspring of a certain tree in the Philema orchard.

I do not give my chestnut trees special care. They are fertilized and cultivated the same as young peach orchards. We try to bring in a peach orchard the third summer, with enough fruit to make it worth spraying. I see no reason to wait seven or eight years to get a chestnut orchard into bearing. If you will keep down competition from weeds, cultivate frequently, and give the tree plenty of nitrogen you will be surprised at the growth it will make. I set the trees twenty-four feet each way, with the idea of thinning later when they begin to crowd. In this way I will get higher acre yields in the early years. When they reach maturity I will have them thinned down to forty-eight feet each way. As they reach heavy bearing the rate of growth will slow down and I will adjust the nitrogen to keep them from becoming too vegetative.

So far the only insects that have bothered me are caterpillars that ordinarily feed on wild maypops, or passion flowers. These caterpillars will defoliate a tree. The only tree that I have lost from winter-killing was one defoliated by the caterpillars early last fall. It may become necessary for me to spray for these worms if they become too plentiful.

I do not come before you as an authority on chestnut growing. I feel that to force myself to do my best I should plant enough trees to make me find out how to handle them. In the rush and bustle of peach and pecan growing if I had only a few chestnut trees I might decide that not much was involved, and neglect the chestnuts. I know that with two thousand trees already planted and some of them bearing I am going to make a great effort to make the project profitable. I have decided that chestnut growing has possibilities as a tree crop in my section, and is worth my time and effort. I know there are many problems ahead, but so did my father when he planted peaches and pecans many years ago. I am still meeting new problems with them each year. Problems go hand in hand with the fruit and nut business. It is the fellow who is willing to try to work them out who has a chance to profit. If I wait until all the problems are solved I will never grow chestnuts. The day that I decide that I know all the answers about growing peaches, pecans or chestnuts, is the day I start going broke. I have been badly bent several times while I was struggling to find an answer. Each year starts full of hope, with visions of a nice fat bank balance when the jobs are all done. Then the problems start and if I can lick enough of them, I come through with the right to see if I can't do a still better job next year, despite the risks of too much rain, not enough rain, hail, insects and diseases.

I have found that each year from 15 to 50 million pounds of chestnuts are imported from Europe. The same blight that destroyed our native chestnuts, is going full tilt in Italy and other European countries. If the blight runs its course as it did in this country, it will not be many years until we will not have chestnuts from Europe. I am going to grow some to fill this gap. In 1950 Dr. McKay sent me eight trees, four Meiling, two Nanking, two Kuling. Two Meiling and two Nanking to be planted together, two Meiling and two Kuling together. Each combination to be isolated so that the nuts produced would be of known crosses. These trees bloomed this spring and two of them set a few burs. Next year I hope to turn over to Dr. McKay nuts from these trees to be planted, and grown to fruiting age. I now have about one hundred and sixty grafted trees. I intend to fruit my seedlings with the hope that among them I will find trees superior enough to be given variety status. I will then top-work the rest to varieties. At present I intend to plant more trees each winter until I have at least one hundred acres of orchards. If and when the weevil moves in I will have the equipment on hand to spray, using the same equipment on peaches or pecans.

I would like to see this Association ask that more research on chestnut production be done by the U. S. D. A. It will not be done until we ask for it. The men in the department are not in position to do much asking for additional funds. It is the responsibility of groups like the N. N. G. A. and the Southeastern Chestnut Grower's Association. We are in need of more breeding and selection of new, and better adapted varieties. We need processing research, marketing research, and research in the field of production. We are not going to get it done until we insist on it good and strong.

This spring, at Fort Valley, Georgia, the Southeastern Chestnut Grower's Association was formed. We hold our convention in March and will be glad to have everyone interested in chestnut growing, marketing, processing or research, attend our convention. I think in time this organization will want to become affiliated with the N. N. G. A., to the mutual benefit of both. I will be glad to have any of you visit my orchards and show me how to grow chestnuts, I am constantly searching for information.

PRESIDENT MACDANIELS: We thank Mr. Wilson very much for his talk, and we think it does take a lot of courage to embark on an experiment of that kind.

In view of the lateness of the hour, unless somebody objects, we will adjourn until tomorrow morning at 8:30.

At 9:40 o'clock, p.m., the meeting adjourned.