Among the products that came to our attention, however, was one which had both filbert butter and solidified peanut oil in it. When we tested this product among many of our friends, they declared it tasted too much like peanut butter. It spoiled the delicate, fine flavor of the natural filbert butter (which we were marketing without adding any sort of seasoning, and without roasting the product the way peanuts are roasted before they are ground into butter.)
Now, if any of you readers think that we have left out something important which would have insured the success had we done it that way, we would certainly like to hear from you, or we have some nice machinery that we will sell cheap in case you want to experiment with it yourself. I would be the last one to condemn the future possibility of producing a commercial nut butter, and yet it is strange that the only successful nut butter is not a nut butter at all. Peanut butter is not a nut butter because peanuts are a legume like a pea or bean. To my knowledge, we do not have any nut butters on the market today with the exception of the cashew nut butter, which recently had a distribution in our locality, but which seems now to have run its course much as our products did. We bought the cashew butter and tried to interest everybody to use it, just to see whether it was any different than our product in its popularity. In our meager tests we found that the filbert butter was slightly more popular than the cashew, since the cashew reminded people too much of peanuts again. It was also very expensive. However, there must be a way to make a satisfactory butter out of filberts or hybrid nuts, as they carry the hope of the cheapest nut product, which is fundamentally necessary to manufacture a popular food item.
The method of propagation of the Hazilbert is by layers instead of grafting—layering is a cheaper and more satisfactory method. Also, the nuts are the most satisfactory to crack as they have no inner partitions which would require intricate machinery to extract the kernel. Their keeping quality is excellent; we have tested this out over a number of years, and filbert butter properly processed will easily keep a year without turning rancid or having an unfavorable flavor. The tonnage of nuts that can be produced on an acre of land is unbelievably high. I have measured individual plants and their production, and the area that they covered, and it is safe to say that we can expect to produce a ton of nuts in the shell per acre in favorable locations on good deep soil. Even at 10c per pound for the nuts this is a good return. New methods of gathering the nuts after they fall from the involucre or husk are being discovered and improved by the western growers from time to time, so that the old expensive method of hand-picking is being eliminated. This should make the filbert even cheaper to harvest.
It is not my intention here to discourage the manufacture of filbert butter, but to point out the difficulty that I have had personally to promote the idea in a commercial way. Neither is it my intention to stimulate too much interest in the planting of the new filbert varieties which are still under test. I feel that it is necessary to test a plant for at least a five-year period before it can be singled out as a plant to propagate. We have not yet reached the point where we care to sell these plants, as much better ones might crop up among the untested plants, which number over 1000, and which have never yet had a chance to bear so as to show what they can do. At some future time I expect to write an article on filbert hybrid culture (Hazilberts) for the whole central, north, and northeastern part of the United States, and at that time I believe that tests will have progressed to such a point that recommendations can be made.
DR. MacDANIELS: There was one more paper that the Secretary has that was not scheduled, from Mr. Elton E. Papple, of Ontario. Title, "Filberts, Walnuts, and Chestnuts on the Niagara Peninsula."
Filberts, Walnuts and Chestnuts on the Niagara Peninsula
ELTON E. PAPPLE, Cainsville, Ontario
My brother and I have been interested in growing nut trees for some time, and have had some interesting experiences and some success. A few years ago, Mr. Slate sent us from Geneva some varieties of filberts which he considered quite hardy. We purchased some from Mr. Gellatly in Westbank, British Columbia, some from Mr. Troup, Jordan Station, Ontario (near Vineland); also from J. F. Jones Nursery, then in Lancaster, Pa. Mr. Slate sent us scionwood and we grafted these scions in the spring and layered them shortly afterwards. By the following spring they were rooted well enough to be planted out in the nursery row. This gave us our material to work with, and about the third year we started making crosses between different varieties. The first year we obtained quite a few crosses, and had a good number of these seeds to germinate in the spring after taking from stratified storage and planting them in the nursery row. These trees have now started to come into bearing, and they promise to be better than their parents in some instances.
We made a number of crosses since, but we have been very busy and the young trees of these crosses have just about perished through neglect. In this last lot we had a cross of the filbert on the beak or horn hazel[5], and of a cluster of three, had one to grow, which in turn was promptly eaten off by a rabbit or rodent of some description. The reason for this cross originally, was that, so far as we could see in the last fifteen years the male catkins never winter-kill; whereas filbert trees are subject to this hazard. Some of the filbert varieties have the ability to withstand changeable weather and not lose all of their catkins. Others will winter-kill in the wood as well. We have removed all our Barcelona and Du Chilly trees because they winter-killed almost one hundred percent.
[5] Corylus rostrata.—Ed.