Three years ago the trees here bore quite a crop and no squirrel ever hoarded his winter supply with more satisfaction than I had with that first peck or so of nuts. Last year promised well, and many trees had nuts set for the first time, but owing to the intensely hot summer, or some other reason they did not mature.
There is a question as to the adaptability of Persian walnuts to this climate. The severe winter of 1917-18 with its sudden and extreme changes of temperature killed scores of my peach trees, while the established walnuts came through practically uninjured by a temperature of twenty-three below zero.
The World War did not take all the black walnuts in the country for gun stocks, for there are many fine trees still in the Genesee Valley. Every fall I am on the watch for trees bearing an abundance of large nuts which we use for parent stock.
It would be quite out of place for me to discuss the various methods of grafting before this audience all of whom know so much more about it than I do. But after many trials we have had the best results from grafting in the greenhouse. The black walnut stock is about four years old when potted, and the scions are cut in January or February and used immediately. Fifty per cent. is our average of success by this method, and some of the trees not two years old are bearing nuts.
I have tried planting pecan trees, but so far they have always been winter killed. Some Indiana trees planted this spring are growing and I am hoping they may prove hardy.
The Sober Paragon chestnuts have shown wonderful growth and bear nuts most abundantly. Each year, however, a tree or two is killed by the blight and I suppose soon my orchard will meet the fate of all the other chestnuts in the East. It seems as if someone ought to discover a remedy for this destructive pest. Tomorrow I hope to see you all at my farm where you can see what use one woman has made of her opportunities for nut culture.
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THE PRESIDENT: On behalf of the association I am certainly very grateful to you for your paper which contains some very valuable information.
Last week I went up to East avenue here to see the Thompson walnut grove and met Mr. Thompson and talked with him. The grove is in a very much run down condition. In fact he is thinking of using dynamite to blow it up and market the wood in Batavia for gunstocks at the gun factory there. He told us that in the thirty-six years that he has had it, he has had only three crops of nuts. One of the crops was an especially good one, I have forgotten the number of bushels he had, but he sold one hundred bushels, he said, to Sibley. Lindsay & Curr at nine dollars a bushel. If he could get a crop every year at that price I think he would be making pretty good money. I would class that orchard as a failure.
Last week, however, I had the privilege of seeing a walnut orchard that certainly surprised me greatly. I went to Lockport at the invitation of our very enthusiastic member, Mr. Pomeroy, to see the Pomeroy orchard, and I saw several trees heavily loaded with good sized nuts. Mr. Pomeroy estimates that he will have in the neighborhood of six or seven thousand pounds of nuts. The trees look healthy and show no evidence of disease. As I understand some of the trees are fifty years of age and there have been only two crop failures in that time. My idea is that the Pomeroy walnut is very hardy and of unusually fine strain. I believe that there is little hope for the commercial development of the English walnut much north of the fortieth parallel. I believe there will be some instances found, like that of the Pomeroy nut, where the seedling will do very well. It certainly has done very well with him. The Avon orchards are seedling trees, of course, the nuts having been gotten from a residence on Lake avenue, Mrs. Cramer's, at the corner of Emerson street. Evidently that strain is entirely different from the strain of nuts represented by the Pomeroy orchard which were brought from Philadelphia by Mr. Pomeroy's father.