In growing chestnuts it is the practice first to cut down the old native trees. As in all likelihood these would be dead in a few years anyhow, this is economical. Dead lumber is not as valuable as live lumber. The first year after a chestnut is cut, a crop of young suckers come up around the stump. These shoots are grafted with scions of a desired variety. There is a good story of a lad of twelve years of age who asked his father to graft a chestnut tree. Although the man was grafting apple trees at the time he laughed at the boy's idea. The lad did not forget and years after he put his idea into practice and now owns a chestnut grove which brings him an income of thousands of dollars. His chestnut groves are on waste land unfit for ordinary farm purposes. If one farm boy in every county would take an interest in growing the nuts that belong to his region, think how the value of the nut crop would increase. Every boy knows that the hickory nuts on one particular shell-bark are bigger and sweeter than on every other one he knows of. He and his friends try to get there first, before the "other gang" do, and make sure of their share. But does he ever plant any big sweet nuts along a fence row and take care of the young trees till they are big enough to take care of themselves? In the seventeenth century there was a law in certain European countries that every young man should plant a certain number of walnut trees. Unless he could prove that he had complied with the law, he couldn't marry. What a good idea! With such a law we might have more fine trees and fewer hasty marriages.
CHINQUAPINS
A coloured girl brought me a pint of chinquapins from her home in Ca'line County, Virginia; I sampled them eagerly, taking great pleasure in their diminutive prettiness, tidy shape, and rich, dark colouring. I kept a handful securely tied in the little salt bag in which they had made the journey and took them to my native state to show to the children, who had never seen a chestnut tree of any kind.
When I took the bag from the trunk, there was a dustiness about the feel of it that aroused my suspicions. I emptied the contents into a flat dish. There were my nuts, their glossy brown shells as smooth as ever, but empty. Rolling about amongst them were a lot of the plumpest little white grubs, fairly bent double with corpulency. There must have been one for each nut, for not a sound kernel was left.
I learn from chestnut-wise people that these weevils are another great enemy of chestnut culture, no remedy having been found.
The chinquapin is the Southern child's chestnut. It is sometimes a tree, but more often a low shrub. The bur is round and has only one nut in it. A good many are marketed, especially in Southern cities, and bring a good price when fresh. The weevils enter the nuts before they are mature and it is difficult to find the bad nuts till too late to prevent a disagreeable impression. This interferes with the popularity of the chinquapin as a dessert nut.
HAZEL-NUTS
The American hazel-nut flourishes over the eastern half of the United States. It is a sweet little nut, much more to my taste than the bigger filbert, which is so popular in our markets. We used to gather hazel-nuts in the edge of woods which fringe the little rivers of the Mississippi Valley. The bushes grew in thickets and while the big brothers and sisters gathered the nuts from among the closely interlaced branches that grew scarcely higher than their heads, the smaller fry crept in underneath and getting about on the floor of the woods searched for nuts that had ripened early and dropped from the browning husk.
There is no progress in simply going out in the fall and taking what nature furnishes. Unaided, the good mother goes on producing the same small nuts, caring just as patiently for the inferior ones and even encouraging the nut weevils to prey upon them. But I wonder if some boy or girl who thinks there isn't any interesting work to be done on the farm, could not make some experiments in hazel-nut culture.
The bushes grow readily from seed, but seedlings do not always produce as fine nuts as those that were planted. For this reason one can save time by selecting the bushes that bear the largest crop of fine nuts and propagating those. They grow in any well drained, fairly rich soil and I know of hundreds of miles of fence rows answering these requirements, which now produce poison ivy, cat brier and other harmful crops. Hazel bushes make a beautiful fence row, and yield a salable crop. Hazel bushes propagate naturally by suckers and layers. By manuring well in summer long shoots for layering will be forced. "These should be staked down in winter or spring and covered with earth. They may be removed to nursery rows or orchard at the end of the first season." So says W. A. Taylor in the "Cyclopædia of American Horticulture." The same writer gives directions for pruning as follows: Strong shoots should be headed back to promote spur formation (the nuts are borne on short side shoots) and old wood that has borne fruit should be removed annually. Suckers should be kept down unless wanted for propagation. March or April is the best time to prune as they blossom very early and one must avoid cutting off either the young nuts or the pollen-bearing flowers. The nuts should be gathered when the husk begins to brown at the edges. If left longer, as is most often done, in the case of wild nuts, a large proportion of the crop falls to the ground and is lost. Beside, the dried hulled nuts do not bring as high a price as the fresh unhusked ones. If kept long in the husk they will mould, unless dried thoroughly. The nuts, however, will keep through the season in a cool place.