5. I have found no real evidence that walnuts of our planting are toxic to other trees standing immediately beside them. To test this, we planted a few apple, peach, and plum trees in the walnut rows. They still stand literally arm in arm. This is, of course, all wrong. No tree should be so crowded. The apple trees monopolize space by excessive lateral growth. The plums send up unwanted shoots from their roots. The peach trees are passing out. Two or three of the apple trees are half dead. Others still live, but I am not very hopeful that, after the walnut trees are more mature, any of the apples will survive. The usual diseases and insects, plus shading by the walnuts seems to account for most if not all of the dead trees to date.
6. Grass growth is excellent right up to the trunks of all of the trees. It has never been necessary for us to lose the use of the land upon which the trees are planted. While the trees were young, of course, no pasturing was permitted. The land between the rows was cultivated. In these strips we raised berries and other crops. Now that the trees are tall enough to be beyond the danger of damage from livestock, we graze the pasture under and between the trees. No damage is evident from trampled earth (the walnuts are deep-rooted) and the hazard of fire is eliminated because there is now no need to mow excessive grass, weeds, or brush.
7. The most precocious seedling walnuts began to bear nuts at about 7 years of age. New bearers are coming in each year. All are still counted as adolescent trees, yet, last fall, picking up the nuts from none but trees marked for their better quality of nuts, we gathered some 40 bushels of nuts in the shell.
8. Today, we can count about 2,000 walnut trees which promise to be of good timber quality 35 years hence. At a reasonable estimate, 1,000 trees will then survive, be 50 years old, be worth $50.00 each, at present prices. Total, $50,000.00. This represents an annual increment in value of $1,000.00 per year for the 20 acres which are closely planted to black walnuts. Can the average farmer save that much in his lifetime? Can even the exceptional farmer do it on 20 acres? With as little investment of money and work? If so, how?
Any farmer can do as well, or better, without losing a single immediately productive acre. Why doesn't he?
The answer is in the very nature of the farmer's business. As has already been said, he is primarily a producer of food. If trees stand in the way, he chops them down. He has always chopped them down. It has become a habit. If the farmer is to be persuaded to change his ways and turn to planting trees, instead of destroying them, I repeat, the entering wedge into his interest will be, I believe, through dual-purpose trees—trees for food crops, as well as for timber crops. Of these species, the black walnut of eastern America is probably the most outstanding one of all, at least in the mid-section of America. The butternut—"white walnut"—flourishes better in the north. The chestnut is another—a tree almost literally raised from the dead by the efforts of a few miracle workers like Dr. Arthur H. Graves of the Connecticut Experiment Station, who, with others of his kind, has been in the throes of producing a blight-resistant, tall-growing hybrid timber tree out of the bushy Chinese chestnut, a producer of the sweetest of nuts. The pecan, too, is being pushed northward. Great groves of wild pecans have firmly established themselves along the Ohio River. Their timber is fair; not wonderful. The mulberry tree is still another. The American species produces a timber which is remarkably durable under ground. Its fruit is not sufficiently appreciated. It makes an unsurpassed jam or jelly or pie when combined with a tart fruit like the cherry, grape, or currant. And who does not know the precious wood of the wild cherry? Its rosy warmth of color is the pride of the "antique" connoisseur; its fruit beloved by birds and squirrels; its juice, the secret of the cherry cordial. Even that foreigner, the Persian "English" walnut, of Carpathian strains, is pushing north into Canada and the East Coast region. Its wood, too, under the name of "Circassian," is famous for its figured beauty[3].
[3] Some of the "Circassian walnut" is another genus, the wingnut (Pterocarya).—Ed.
One might go on and on with a list of trees and tree crops easily available, mostly native, all of which should be both figuratively and actually right down the farmer's alley.
Perhaps the education which can come through the agency of many school forests will in good time turn the attention of young and impressionable minds to the potential wealth to be found in the trees. Normally, the young, who, of all people, should be forward-looking, are least concerned with the long-term future. They are not given to making plans or building estates for their grandchildren. As a consequence, the planting of trees is traditionally taken over by the aged, or at least by the mature. This is all wrong. The young farmer who plants interesting trees is preparing for some of the most exciting and prideful moments in the years which follow. And he is also building, at low cost, and with little labor, a priceless estate.
How to Lose Money in Manufacturing Filbert Nut Butter