In addition to caring for their large farm, nut orchard and a choice herd of Hereford cattle, Carl has found time to do some breeding work with Oriental poppies from which he has made some very choice selections. They have also worked with several other perennials. Sidney and Carl Schlagenbusch are true horticulturists by nature and are fine folks.
On the way home from this recent trip, we stopped to see Corliss Williams near Danville. His brother Wendell Williams, located the Winkler Hazel, before the first world war in which he served and never returned. We saw a Persian walnut, 25 or 30 years old, in Mr. Williams front yard. It was a U.S.D.A. introduction from Russia. It seems to be perfectly hardy, bears well and is of excellent quality. The shagbark hickories are plentiful in his locality. He has top-worked 200 or more, many of them to Burlington, which is productive and fills well with him.
Rockville as a Hickory Interstock
HERMAN LAST, Steamboat Rock, Iowa
As a nut-grower I am afraid I have been over-rated; I make my living tilling the soil and dabble in my nut grove only when I can find a few moments to spare—in fact all I know about nuts and nut-grafting, I owe to my good friend, Edgar Huen. I shall always remember that balmy May morning 25 years ago when Mr. Huen came over with a kit full of hickory scions, and suggested we go out in my pasture and do some grafting. In that bag were Stratford, Rockville, Des Moines, Marquette, Hagen and Monahan.
We grafted all that day—that is Mr. Huen did the grafting and I watched him. Today these trees are living monuments of our work.
The only tree of these varieties that has ever borne enough nuts to feed a squirrel is the Stratford.
Meanwhile I have been doing a little grafting myself. I acquired a few pecans for understocks but the only variety that was congenial with pecan as far as I knew was Rockville, but it produced no nuts—it was just a nice tree to look at.
One spring my brother-in-law who lives just across the line in Missouri sent me some shellbark scions from a tree in his pasture. I grafted these scions on a pecan and they took off like a house on fire. This variety proved to be a rugged individual and bore every year but the nuts were no good—all cavities like a true shellbark.
Then one spring morning I grafted some of these shellbark scions on Rockville; the grafts took and I soon noticed a transformation. The grafts had blended with the understock and the offspring was different from either parent. The best part of the new hybrid was that it bore abundantly and the nuts are of fine quality.