With the idea of getting practical results sooner, since nut trees mature slowly, I interplanted my nut trees with varieties of apple, plum and cherry. Doing so also served to economize on ground, since ultimately nut trees require a great deal of space for best growth. Walnut trees, for example, should be set 40 to 60 feet apart in each direction.
Pinus Flexilus nut seeds, Natural Size
I learned a variety of facts during these first years of trial and error. I discovered, for instance, that iron fence posts rust away in an acid soil; that one must use cedar or oak. Conversely, in alkaline soil, iron will last indefinitely, but that the nitrogenous bacteria will quickly rot wooden posts. I found that the secret of growing hickories successfully lies in giving them plenty of room, with no forest trees around to cut off their supply of sunlight and air. I learned that it is impractical to graft a large forest tree of butternut or hickory. Incidental to that, I learned that a branch of a butternut tree which looks large enough to support a man's weight near the trunk, will not do so when the branch is green and alive, but that a dead branch of similar size will. Contrariwise, even a small green limb of a bitternut-hickory will bear my weight, but an old limb, though several inches thick, becomes so brittle after it is dead for several years that it will break under slight pressure. Fortunately, falls from trees do not usually result in serious injuries but I did acquire quite a few bruises learning these distinctions.
There is always a natural mortality in planting trees, but in those first years, lacking badly-needed experience, I lost more than 75%. Nearly all of them started to grow but died during the first few winters. Those which survived were the start of a nursery filled with hardy trees which can endure the climate of the north. In looking back, I appreciate how fortunate I was in having sought and received advice from experienced nurserymen. Had I not done so, frequent failures would surely have discouraged me. As it was, the successes I did have were an incentive which made me persist and which left me with faith enough in an ultimate success to go on buying seeds and trees and to make greater and more varied experiments.
Chapter 3
BLACK WALNUTS
I have spent more of my time cultivating black walnuts than any other kind of nut tree and given more of my ground area over to them. Yet it was with no great amount of enthusiasm that I started working with these trees. Obviously there could be nothing new or extraordinary resulting from my planting trees of this species either on my farm or at my St. Paul home, since there already were mature, bearing black walnut trees at both places. It was only with the idea that they would be an attractive addition to the native butternut groves that I decided to plant some black walnut seedlings.
This did not prove feasible as I first attempted it. I had engaged a Mr. Miller at St. Peter to procure wild black walnut trees for me since they grew near that town. He was to dig these trees with as much of the root system included as possible and ship them to my farm. But the winter season came before this had been accomplished and both Mr. Miller and I, deciding the idea was not as practical as we had hoped it would be, abandoned it. Later that same autumn I found that a nursery just outside of St. Paul had several rows of overgrown black walnut trees which they would sell me quite reasonably. I bought them and sent instructions to the tenant at my farm to dig twenty-eight large holes in which to plant them. Packed in straw and burlap, the trees weighed about 500 pounds, I found. This was much too heavy and cumbersome to pack in my old touring car, so I hunted around for some sort of vehicle I could attach to my car as a trailer. In an old blacksmith shop, I came upon an antiquated pair of buggy wheels. They looked as though they were ready to fall apart but I decided that with repairs and by cautious driving, they might last out the trip of thirty-five miles. So I paid the blacksmith his asking price—twenty-five cents. The spokes rattled and the steel tires were ready to roll off their wooden rims but the axles were strong. My father-in-law and I puttered and pounded, strengthened and tightened, until we felt our semi-trailer was in good-enough order. It might have been, too, if the roads in the country hadn't been rough and frozen so hard that they hammered on the solid, unresisting tires and spokes until, almost within sight of the farm, one wheel dismally collapsed. As the wheel broke, the trailer slid off the road into a ditch, so that it was necessary to send on to the farm for the plow horses to haul out the car, the trailer and the trees. The horses finished hauling the trees to that part of the farm where holes had been dug for them. I had told my tenant to dig large holes and large holes he had certainly dug! Most of them were big enough to bury one of the horses in. Such was my amateurish first endeavor.