The orchard was planted by my late husband about 1915. The trees came from at least two nurseries as there are two distinct sets of varieties. There are eight varieties from the North and eight from the South. Of the northern sorts there are Busseron, Butterick, Indiana, Kentucky, Major, Niblack, Posey, and Warrick. These came from the nursery of R. L. McCoy, Lake, Spencer County, Indiana.
The southern varieties are Delmas, Frotscher, Georgia (Georgia Giant),
Hale, Schley, Stuart, Teche, and Van Deman. Hale trees have been the
slowest to come into bearing, and there are several which appear to be
Hale which are not yet in fruit.
+Nut Crops Scanty+
The trees near the house, both on the lawn and in the barnyard are set irregularly but those in the orchard are in rows, 65 feet each way. They are beautiful in appearance, being from 40 to 55 feet tall, and are very healthy.
However, they do not bear well. We had a pretty good crop in 1943, about 500 pounds, which we sold for 30 and 35 cents per pound. Since then we have had very few nuts, as the flowers have evidently been killed each year by frost.
Most of the nuts we have had have come from trees near the river, where the air is tempered by salt air coming in at high tide. At this writing, early August, there seems to be more nuts than at any time since 1943. There was no frost that I could detect after the trees flowered, but there are few nuts on the trees farthest from the river.
The fruit trees back in the county, on what we call "the highlands," have no fruit this year. Apparently our northern varieties of pecan do not stand the cold any better than the southern sorts. In the last few years, there have been more nuts of the southern varieties. I suppose the flowers of the northern varieties came out at a time when they were more easily frozen.
We have several trees that are evidently seedlings, as they grew up from the ground after the tops died, They usually bear well, producing sweet nuts, well-flavored but small.
We have six Persian walnuts that have had only about ten nuts in all these years. One tree has a black walnut coming up from the root on which it was grafted. It is of the same size as the Persian top. Two years ago, this tree had about 30 nuts on the Persian side and 50 on the black. It is not easily accessible and I have not been to it this year.
+Behavior of Pecans+