Chestnut trees, like gray ghosts, still reach their naked arms high on many West Tennessee hillsides, and occasionally one finds a farmer splitting posts from their remains, for chestnut is an enduring wood. A few of these tenacious individuals are still sending up sprouts that may reach considerable size before they are again struck down.
I have had no serious trouble with blight in any of the named chestnut varieties, either Chinese or Japanese. I have lost some trees by its entrance into the seedling stock, but not many. My greatest headache has been sun-scald and winter killing, or to be more exact, "early spring" killing.
One of the juvenile characteristics of oriental chestnuts is the retention of their leaves all winter. They also grow in a rather sprangling way. This is a protective mechanism, and when we prune them to an upright form, or graft, this wood having lost its juvenile characteristics, we are inviting trouble unless we protect the trunk in some other way. I prefer to use a paper wrap as described under Pecans, as it is quickly done and is inexpensive. This also gives protection to immature callus cells at bud or graft union.
Of the older Chinese chestnut varieties in my hands, Hobson has excelled, with large chestnuts (34 to the pound in 1948.) Zimmerman also produces a good nut. Colossal (Hybrid) is very productive and produces the largest nuts of any chestnut that I have seen grown in Tennessee, but the quality of the raw nut is not equal to Hobson. It refuses to grow on Chinese stock, but thrives on Japanese. It is pollen sterile. I have several newer varieties under observation and although they are growing vigorously I have not had time to form an opinion on them.
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President Davidson: The Reverend Bernard Taylor of Alpine, Tennessee, will next read a paper on The Marketing of Black Walnuts as a Community Project. Mr. Taylor.
Marketing Black Walnuts as a Community Project
THE REV. BERNARD TAYLOR, Alpine, Tennessee
The Rev. Mr. Taylor: I suppose that every community where black walnuts grow wild has a marketing of some kind, some kind of a plan of marketing, maybe just what every boy or every man who has some spare time or some of the womenfolks may do to make something out of the walnuts that are lying around.
In the community of Alpine, which is in Overton County, people used to go out on the ridge with wagons and bring home wagonloads of walnuts, and they would sell them either in the shell or they would crack them and sell them in pretty poor condition, however they could sell them. When we first began selling walnut kernels in Alpine we got 19 cents a pound for the kernels, and that was more than they were worth, I believe, because they were dirty, greasy, and they had mildew gobs in the bunches of kernels. So I don't know how the rolling stores that came around that way could make anything out of them trading them in at that price.