REASONS FOR OUR LIMITED KNOWLEDGE AS TO WHAT VARIETIES OF NUT TREES TO PLANT.
Prof. W. N. Hutt, North Carolina.
Agriculturally this continent is about three centuries old. Horticulturally its experience has scarcely reached the century mark. Practically all the commercial fruit industry of the United States is the product of the last half century. Relatively speaking we are quite young and therefore there are a great many things about nut-growing that we may not be expected to know. In the older lands of Europe and Asia they have a horticultural experience going back from ten to twenty centuries.
In this new country the pioneers had necessarily to confine themselves to the fundamentals and it is to be expected that their horticultural operations were confined to a very narrow maintenance ratio. As the country was cleared up and developed certain sections were found to be especially suited to fruit culture. About these centers specialized fruit-growing industries were developed. These planters tried out all available varieties and developed their own methods of culture. As these industries developed horticultural societies were formed for the exchanging of ideas and experiences. In 1847 the American Pomological Society was formed as a national clearing house of horticultural ideas.
The first work the society undertook was to determine the varieties of the different classes of fruits suitable for planting in different sections of the country. Patrick Barry, of Rochester, one of the pioneers of American horticulture was for years the chairman of the committees on varietal adaptation and did an immense amount of work on that line. At the meetings of the society he went alphabetically over the variety lists of fruits and called for reports on each one from growers all over the country. This practice was kept up for years and the resulting data were collated and compiled in the society's reports. In this systematic way the varietal adaptations of the different classes of fruits were accurately worked out for all parts of the country. A similar systematic roll call of classes and varieties of nuts grown by the members of this association would be of immense value to intending planters of nut trees.
In northern nut-growing, however, it may be questioned if we are yet arrived at the Patrick Barry stage. What we need is pioneer planters who have the courage to plant nut trees and take a chance against failure and not wait for others to blaze the trail. It needs men of vision and courage to plant the unknown and look with hope and optimism to the future. So many are deterred from planting by the fact that nut trees are tardy in coming into bearing and uncertain of results. In these stirring times we want men of nerve in the orchard as well as in the trenches. We need tree planters like Prof. Corsan who, at a former meeting of this association when joked about planting hickories, replied that he wasn't nervous and could watch a hickory tree grow. It takes nerve to be an innovator and to plant some radically different crop from what your conservative neighbors all about you are planting.
The Georgia cotton planters wagged their heads and tapped their foreheads when Col. Stuart and Major Bacon turned good cotton land into pecan groves. But the thousands of acres of commercial pecan orchards now surrounding these original plantings showed that these pioneer pecan planters were not lunatics or impractical dreamers, but courageous men of vision, thirty years ahead of their time.
Nut tree planting is not all waiting. It will give the busy man some surprises as I have reason to know from my own limited experience. Ten years ago when I planted my first experimental orchard I set about preparing several other lines of quick maturing experimental work, for I did not expect those trees would have any thing to report for a decade or so. You can imagine how surprised and delighted I was when on the third year there was a sprinkling of nuts, enough to be able to identify the most precocious varieties. The surprise increased to wonder the next year when there was an increased number of nuts on the trees that had borne last year and a number of new varieties came into bearing. In the eighth year when an 800-pound crop of nuts changed that experimental planting into a commercial pecan orchard, I was, to use a sporting phrase, "completely knocked out of the box." The man who thinks there are no thrills in tree planting has something yet to learn. It is the surest sign of a real true-blue horticulturist that he wants to set some kind of new tree or plant.
It is the rarest kind of a plantation that has on it no waste land. Fence rows, ditch banks and rough or stony places are to be found on practically every farm. Such spots too often lie waste or galled or at best are covered with weeds, briars, bushes or useless scrubby trees. These waste places would make a fine trial ground for testing out nut trees. A few fine walnuts, pecans or hickories, or rows of chinquapins and hazels would add profit as well as beauty to these waste and unsightly places found on most farms.
Following old conservative methods the average farmer sets about his house and buildings unproductive oaks, elms and maples, with scarcely a question of a thought that there are as handsome shade trees that will produce pleasure and profit as well. On our lawns and about our door yards we could plant to advantage the Japanese walnut and the hardier types of pecans and Persian walnuts. It would be of interest to try a few seedlings of these classes of nuts. If such practices were followed in the planting of nut trees it would not be long until new and valuable sorts would be found and a great deal of data made available to intending nut planters. I believe that a great deal of good would result from the preparation and dissemination of a circular encouraging farmers in nut planting.
This association is doing a valuable work in offering prizes to locate high class seedling nut trees that will be worthy of propagating. Sooner or later valuable sorts will be found in this way. In this connection it will be wise for this association to solicit the active co-operation of the horticultural workers in the different states. The workers of the agricultural colleges, experiment stations and extension service do a great deal of traveling and have special facilities for getting in touch with promising varieties. The horticulturists of some states have made nut surveys of their states to ascertain their resources in the way of valuable varieties and of conditions suitable for nut culture. The interesting bulletin, "Nut Growing in Maryland," gotten out by Prof. Close, when he was State Horticulturist in Maryland, is a very valuable contribution along this line. It would be well for this association to solicit the co-operation of the trained horticulturists in the northern states to make nut surveys and ascertain definitely the valuable varieties already growing within their borders and what are the possibilities for the production of these types for home purposes for commercial growing. A few of the state experiment stations have taken up definite experimental and demonstration nut projects and are doing valuable work in this line. This association should memorialize the directors of the other stations to undertake definite nut projects and surveys and get the work under way as soon as possible.
While endeavoring to stimulate private, state and national investigations in nut culture, the author would be very remiss if he failed to recognize the very valuable work already done by the zealous, painstaking and unselfish pioneers of northern nut growing. Messrs. Bush and Pomeroy have given to the country and especially to the north and east, two valuable hardy Persian walnuts. Our absent president, Mr. W. C. Reed, of Vincennes, Ind., is doing a great deal in the testing and dissemination of hardy nut trees. Our first president, though an exceedingly busy surgeon and investigator in medicine, finds time to turn his scientific attention to the testing and breeding of nut trees. Some of our brilliant legal friends, too, find time to pursue the elusive phantom of ideal nuts for northern planting.
We cannot go through the growing list of nut investigators nor chronicle their achievements, but we know that when the history of American horticulture is written up ample justice will be done to their labors and attainments. Let each of us do our part in the building up of the country by the planting of nut trees. Let us plant them on our farms, in our gardens and about our buildings and lawns. Let us induce and encourage our neighbors to plant and do all possible to make nut planting fashionable until it becomes an established custom all over the land. It will not then be long before valuable varieties of nut trees will be springing up all over the country. This association will then soon have a wealth of available data at hand to give to intending planters in all parts of the country.
A Member: In Europe they raise a great many nuts that they ship to this country, chestnuts, hazels and Persian walnuts. I understand they grow usually in odd places about the farms, but the aggregate production amounts to a great deal. We could very well follow the lead given by Europe in that particular, at least.
I think we could have for dissemination circulars which would stimulate people to plant nut trees more widely than at present.
The Secretary: This question of nut planting in waste places always comes up at our meetings and is always encouraged by some and frowned upon by others. I do not think we ought to recommend in an unqualified way the planting of nut trees in waste places. I have planted myself, lots of us have tried it, and found that most nut trees planted in waste places are doomed to failure. I do not recall an exception in my own experience. I understand that in Europe the road sides and the fence rows are planted with trees and the farmers get a part of their income in that way. But with us in Connecticut nut planting in waste places does not seem to be a success. It is quite different when you come to plant nut trees about the house and about the barn. They seem to thrive where they don't get competition with native growth and where they have the fertility which is usually to be found about houses and barns. In fact, I have advocated the building of more barns in order that we might have more places for nut trees. I think we should plant nut trees around our houses and barns where we can watch them and keep the native growth from choking them, and where we can give them fertility and keep them free from worms. The worms this year in Connecticut have been terribly destructive. My trees that I go to inspect every two or three weeks, at one inspection would be leafing out, at the next would be defoliated. If such trees are about your house where you can see them every day or two you can catch the worm at its work. So for experimental planting I think places about our houses and barns can be very successfully utilized. When it comes to commercial planting, I think we must recommend for nut trees what we do for peach trees. We must give them the best conditions. I am hoping from year to year that somebody will come forward to make the experiment of planting nut trees in orchard form and give them the best conditions, as he would if he were going to set out an apple or peach orchard. The association has made efforts by means of circulars to interest the experiment stations, schools of forestry and other agricultural organizations. A number of the members of such organizations are members of the association. The work has been taken up to some slight degree in such places as the School of Forestry at Syracuse. I do not recall any others at this moment, although there are some. I will read part of a letter from Professor Record of the Yale School of Forestry: "The only reasons I can think of why the consideration of nut trees is not given more attention in our school are (1) it comes more under the head of horticulture than forestry (2) lack of time in a crowded curriculum (3) unfamiliarity with the subject on the part of the faculty." We would like to interest these faculties in nut growing. We look upon them as sources of education but evidently we are more advanced than they are in the subject of nut growing and it is up to us to educate them.
Col. Van Duzee: Right now when you are at the beginning of nut growing in the North you cannot over estimate the value for the future of records. My heart goes out to the man who comes to us as a beginner and wants to know something definite. Our records are the only thing we can safely give him. The behavior of individual nut trees, the desirability of certain varieties for certain localities—those things are of tremendous value.
No doubt you know that in California they have come to the point in many sections where they keep records of what each individual tree does. I began that some years ago with the commercial planting that I have had charge of for the last twelve years. We now have an individual tree record of every nut produced since these trees came into bearing—about 2500 trees. I went further than that—I kept a record of the value of the different nuts for growing nursery stock so that I might grow trees that would be the very best produced in our section. Now the years have gone by and I have a ledger account with every tree in that 2500 and I know exactly what it has given me. I know how many nuts it has produced. You would be surprised to see the wide discrepancy in those records, the different behavior of individual trees. I wish I could talk to you longer on that subject. It is something I am very enthusiastic about.
By virtue of the records we have kept for years I have found a source of supply for seed nuts and nursery stock which has proved to be a constant performer. I bud this nursery stock from trees with individual records that have proved themselves to be good performers, I have found that certain varieties have proved themselves not worthy of being planted, and certain other varieties have proven themselves at least promising. This last year I took 100 Schley, 100 Stuart, 100 Delmas and 100 Moneymaker trees and planted them all on the same land. Now these trees, you understand, are grown from the stock grown from a nut that I know the record of for years. I know its desirability. The buds are from selected trees whose records I have. More than that, I alternated the rows and the trees in the rows. These trees are now where they have got to stand right up and make a record so that we will know ten years from today what is the best variety for our section.
I do not think I can make myself as clear as I wish I could this morning, but here is the point. If anybody comes to me I can tell him definitely, and I have records in my office to show, what the different varieties are doing and what soil they are growing in. Here in the north where the industry is in its infancy now is the time to start records. When I saw the subject of Professor Hutt's paper, the "Reasons For Our Limited Knowledge as to What Varieties of Nut Trees to Plant," it occurred to me that if you don't now start right in making records, ten years from today you will still have existing one of the principal reasons why you don't know.
Mr. Kelsey: I started out four years ago with English walnuts. I read the account of Pomeroy and so I got a half dozen trees from him. They all died. I got five or six trees from Mr. Jones. I think this is the third year and one of those has some nuts on. I have got now about 150 trees planted in regular rows where I am cultivating them. But I was going to say that four years ago I sent to Pomeroy and asked him if he wouldn't send me a few nuts as a sample. He sent me 16. I cracked two of them. Fourteen of them I put in. I didn't know how to put them in so I took a broom handle, punched a hole in the ground and stuck them in the bottom. I never thought I would get any results from them. They came up in July. They did not come up quick. I suppose I had them so deep. I set them out three years ago. Some of them are as high as this room in three years on cultivated land set out in rows. They have never borne any. No one knows how long it takes for a seedling to bear. It may be two years, or five years, or ten.
Dr. Morris: I want to bear witness on the point that Col. Van Duzee made, the matter of keeping records. The man who keeps good records is a public benefactor because what he learns becomes public property upon the basis of available data. Every one of us should pay attention to that point which Col. Van Duzee has brought out. Unfortunately my records have been kept by my secretaries in shorthand notes and I have had four different secretaries in ten years, and each with different methods of shorthand. They have not had time to write up all the notes, and so I find it difficult to present good nut records when busily occupied with professional responsibilities, which must come first. I had one field filled with young hybrid nut trees. A neighbor's cow got into that field and the boy who came after the cow found her to be refractory. The boy began to pull up stakes with tags marking the different trees and threw them at the cow. Before he got through he had hybridized about forty records of nut trees.
The Chairman: As a horticulturist along experimental lines I find the trouble is to get people to plant trees and properly plant them. I do not think that the average farmer knows how to plant trees. That is why they get such poor results. They plant them where anybody with intelligence would not plant them. We find in the South that we can grow trees if there is protection against fire and stock. If fire is kept out and stock is kept from grazing, nature will cover the land with forest trees. I think that will go a long way to getting nut trees. But a man planting something as valuable as a nut tree wants to take a little more pains than that. I have seen Mr. Littlepage's place where he is raising handsome trees, but he has planted crops around each tree and there is plenty of plant food. You can grow trees almost anywhere if you make the conditions favorable. In hedge rows and odd places, if the forest soil is preserved, you can grow almost any kind of a nut tree. These conditions must prevail or we must make them prevail.
Just another point on the matter of home planting. I wouldn't be a very good preacher if I didn't carry out my own practices. Just to show my faith by my works I want to say that I took out every shade tree at home and put a nut tree in its place. Down south where shade is very valuable they said "that man is very foolish to cut down nice elms and maples like that and put nut trees in their place." It did look so then for a while. Now I have some handsome pecans and Persian walnuts and Japanese walnuts, and this year I get my first dividends from a tree five years old. Of course we have taken care to preserve their symmetry, but I think our nut trees come pretty close to being our best shade tree. I will challenge anybody to find a handsomer tree than a well-grown pecan. It is a very stalwart tree with its branches of waving foliage, which is the characteristic of an ideal shade tree, and yet, in addition to that, it produces in the fall magnificent nuts. So the proposition of home planting is one that pays quick dividends on attention given. I think I have convinced my neighbors that it is a good deal better to raise handsome nut trees than poplars. My neighbor planted Carolina poplars at the same time. He was out there the other morning raking up the leaves and that is all he will have to do until Christmas time.