MR. CHASE: Thank you, Mr. Clarke.
(Applause.)
Discussion
MR. SHERMAN: I'd like to say, just before you leave this subject, that the speaker barely mentioned the fertilization experiment that was started in Pennsylvania on black walnuts. I think the members of the nut survey stuck their necks out and got their heads hit a little bit when we said that the black walnut as an orchard industry in Pennsylvania was sick. We hadn't been able to find crops of black walnuts. We found individual trees, but we couldn't find orchards of black walnuts, and as a result of that, this fertilization experiment was started, in a 55-acre black walnut orchard with Ohio, Stabler and Thomas varieties.
The owner, Truman Jones, said, "I don't care what you do with the Stablers, you can't hurt them, anyway; they are no good to begin with." But this orchard, evidently from all outward appearances, has been growing very slowly for quite a number of years. It isn't the size it should be, and we think the main trouble there is lack of fertility, and that's the reason why this fertilization experiment was started.
It's quite an ambitious experiment. It takes in about 93 trees in the center of a 55-acre planting of black walnuts. They haven't had a crop, I think, for five or six or seven years. They don't have a crop this year, but we are hoping that some of them next year will have a crop, but if not then the year following.
They are asking about the cultivation. There has been no cultivation there in the orchard for a number of years. It's down in a pretty heavy bluegrass sod. In a portion of that we put the disc in on the tractor and disced and redisced until we got what we thought was a pretty fair seedbed. They found that vertical profile a mixture, and we are hoping to have clover sod instead of bluegrass sod. That's combined with fertility work. I won't take time to go into that, but I think this group is interested in knowing that there is quite an extensive fertility experiment on black walnuts to see why the large plantings are not producing.
I might say in this connection, Mr. Hostetter isn't here this afternoon, hasn't been here, but he has a dandy bang-up nice crop of nuts this year, and Ohio and Thomas are his main varieties.
MR. CRAIG: Did he use any fertilizers?
MR. SHERMAN: Yes, the fertilizer was disced in, and he tried to disc under that bluegrass sod and get that rotting under there. There are quite a few ramifications to that program.