MATTHEW LAHTI, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire
I will bring up to date my experience on nut growing in Wolfeboro, N.
H., and supplement my reports for the years 1947 and 1948.
We had late frosts this spring, so that there is not a peach on any of my peach trees this year. This may also account for the fact that there are no black walnuts either on the Tasterite, the wood of which has withstood the winters very well, or on the Thomas. The Thomas black walnut which I reported in 1948 as having suffered no winter injury the previous winter, apparently did suffer considerable damage, which became evident later. It has borne no nuts since, and there is a lot of dead wood this year and the leaves are sickly looking. I am afraid that the tree is going to die.
The filberts, Medium Long, Red Lambert, and No. 128 Rush x Barcelona, which started to bear in 1947, have since then borne a few nuts each year, but the crop is not heavy enough to recommend them for planting in our climate. While the wood suffers no winter injury, the catkins for the most part get winter killed and, consequently, there is a very sparse crop. What is needed for northern latitudes is a filbert that will ripen in our fairly short growing season, and whose catkins are immune to winter kill. The Winkler seems to be more hardy than the others, but the nuts do not ripen. This year even the Winkler catkins were killed, although the catkins of a wild hazel growing nearby were not.
I have two Crath Persian walnuts planted in 1938 which are the survivors of perhaps a dozen seedlings. These two trees have shown no injury. One is bearing seven nuts this year for the first time, and the other one, bearing for the second year, has 80 nuts on it at the present time. Last year the squirrels got all the nuts so that I could not evaluate them, but I will take precautions to save some this year.
The Broadview Persian walnut has thirty nuts on it this year, but the wood of the Broadview definitely is not hardy in our climate.
Summing up my experience with the various nut trees as previously reported, I would say that our climate is not suited for commercial nut growing, but for home use named varieties of butternuts and hickories that crack out easily and possibly one or two of the Crath walnuts should give satisfactory results. My chief difficulty with hickories has been the poor union at the graft, resulting in slow starvation and death in a few years. I have only three left out of approximately 25 trees that I have planted.
MR. CORSAN: A professor from the University of New Hampshire wrote to me that they were very much interested in planting a nut arboretum. Does anybody know what result came of it? I sent them some hybrids of the Japanese heartnut (female blossom) crossed with our native butternut (male blossom).
DR. MacDANIELS: I guess they are somewhat interested. They have very little possibility of growing very much except the butternuts, and sometimes hybrid filberts.
MR. WELLMAN: I have a friend who is up a little farther north than that, in Woodsville, and they have been urging him to set out filberts for wildlife food there, and he has shown me some of those that he has started. It's been quite a movement up there. I don't know how wide. He has about a hundred seedlings that are used for propagation by the state.