Would you advise planting of pecans in commercial orchards here? Walnuts in their proper location constitute some of California's best improvements. After visiting some bearing paper-shell pecans here in Fresno county, I believe a pecan orchard of choice variety would be more desirable than a walnut orchard.
Pecans do well on moist rich land in the interior valleys where there are sharper temperature changes than in the coast valleys, except perhaps near the upper coast. Such planting as you propose seems promising on lands having moisture enough to carry the nuts to full ripening.
Growing Filberts.
Please give information about growing filberts.
Filberts have been largely a disappointment in California and no product of any amount has ever been made. Good nuts have been produced in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Range. Theoretically, the places where the wild hazel grows would best suit the filbert, and so far this seems to be justified by the little that has actually been done, but there is very little to say about it beyond that. It requires much more experience to lift the nut out of the experimental state.
Early Bearing of Walnuts.
Please inform me if young walnut trees grafted on black walnut stock will produce fruit within 18 months after being planted.
It is true that the French varieties of English walnuts have produced fruit the second summer of their growth. This does not mean, however, that you can count upon a crop the second year. These are usually grafts in nursery rows, and one would have to wait longer, as a rule, for trees planted out in orchards with a chance to make a freer wood growth. This is rather fortunate, because it is better to have a larger tree than to have the growth diverted into bearing a small amount of fruit while the tree is very young. We do not know any advantage in getting nuts the second year except it be to see if you really have secured the variety you desire to produce later.
Handling Walnut Seedlings.
What is the best time to transplant seedlings of the black walnut?