I am patenting a new walnut at this time which I consider the best for our locality. Some day it may produce well in orchard form if trees become available. One thing is certain about it—it is very hardy and is reasonably easy to propagate.
And so we can conclude the walnut chapter by saying that at least we have some giants in the orchard to show for our trouble and expense, which bear nice edible walnuts in favorable seasons. When comparing this with the wild butternut crop from butternuts in the adjacent woods, which has consistently failed each year for the last ten years, it is quite encouraging.
It was my hard luck to have an uncongenial soil for my experiments in chestnuts, and the knowledge of this came so late that I thought the chestnut was not meant to succeed in our territory. So I put my efforts on hickory nuts and filberts. Both of these succeeded to a degree and with my present knowledge and experience on hickory nuts I would not be a bit afraid to start an orchard on good deep clay or other satisfactory soil which hickories like, using grafted trees of Bridgewater and Weschcke.
A few Kirtland and Deveaux No. 2 would be planted for extra pollination and the extra variety in nuts. There are of course many other varieties of hickories that have succeeded in this territory but those above mentioned, have possibilities of commercial success in orchard formation.
The hickory is a difficult tree to transplant and I would advise that grafted trees be dug with a ball of dirt for shipping, similar to an evergreen, as I have found that, with the greatest of care and experience, the hickory is very slow to re-establish itself unless handled that way.
The hybrid hazels are perhaps the hardiest and certainly bear the earliest of any of the nut trees. My own hybrids show great possibilities for commercial enterprise, but as yet no nurserymen are carrying these varieties and I have not found help enough to promote them myself.
I am convinced that had I spent as much time with the chestnuts on favorable soil as I did with hickories that they would probably head the list of successful nut trees growing. Recently I have purchased an adjoining piece of property which has the necessary well-drained, sandy or gravelly soil, which chestnuts seem to like, and I have started my chestnut orchard there along with a sprinkling of hickory and walnut trees, merely as a matter of test.
This year the chestnuts are again putting on a fair crop for the number and the size of the trees involved. As yet, in order to get a reasonable number of nuts for planting, I have to cross-pollinize them by hand, and I was surprised and pleased this year to find one Chinese chestnut tree with staminate bloom, allowing me to make a cross pollinization with an American sweet chestnut and a Chinquapin type chestnut, which grows to be a tall tree. These crosses ought to insure trees with a great degree of hardiness, and should the blight ever strike this territory in the future they should be highly resistant as well. A few of my chestnut trees produce nuts that may be the size of the best Chinese chestnuts, but I am just as fond of the smaller and sweeter chestnuts of the several Chinquapin type trees which seem to be consistent bearers and certainly are prolific. There are three trees in a close group which are strains of the European chestnut combined with American chestnut. These bear rather large nuts and usually every year have a few and of high quality. It is conceivable that by crossing this hybrid with Chinese pollen that something unusual could be produced.
The pure Chinese strain has not proved hardy in this territory and I have never matured a pure variety. However, there are dozens of seedlings that are not old enough to prove whether there might be a hardy specimen among them that may at some time in the future be relied upon for this species of chestnut.
One other species of nut requires a little space here since it has shown that it can bear crops and is hardy enough to be included among the hardy nuts. It is the Gellatly heartnut. It is very subject to the butternut curculio, but in spite of that it continues to grow quite well when grafted on black walnut,—a difficult piece of propagation, however. A tree in St. Paul, on the boulevard, thrives next to a large butternut, and bears nuts practically every year which the squirrels delight in cutting down while still green. This tree is not bothered by the curculio since the curculio does not infest the large butternut near it.