"Your request for a report from this Pacific Coast state came as a surprise. The Western Walnut Growers' Association is very strongly organized as regards Oregon and Washington, and it is difficult to persuade our nut growers here to join an association with its base of operations so far removed as the Northern Nut Growers' Association. I believe that I have been responsible for an additional membership of at least one or two which I think can be considerably augmented this fall.
Filbert growing has firmly caught hold of the enthusiasm of the people here. The acreage has reached 2,000 acres as compared to a bare 150 acres of six years ago. I estimate a planting of 1,500 additional acres to this quick bearing nut, this season. I have trees enough in my nursery to plant 600 acres but regard the majority of the plants as being too small. Planters plant even the smallest one-year layers out a distance varying from ten to twenty-five feet. I regard this as a waste of time, money and energy. Trees with two year old roots are none too big. The variety most planted is the Barcelona, closely followed by Du Chilly, and is supported by pollinizers for these two varieties at the rate of one pollinizer to every nine of the commercial sort. Intent eyes are watching every new seedling in search of new and superior varieties. Some have been found and will be propagated. Nut growers are but warming to the idea. I am putting out eight thousand four-year old seedling filbert trees in orchard form to be tested for qualities desired in a better filbert.
Tree filberts instead of bushes is a new idea that is fast gaining headway against the old method of removing the suckers by hand each season. Corylus colurna, the Turkish species, and Corylus chinensis, the Chinese tree hazel, are most favored as stocks. It has been found that these trees are easily grafted to filberts, that they are extremely hardy and grow twice as fast as the filbert, and that the vigor of the stock enlarges the size of the nut, regardless of variety. Foremost in the recommendation of grafted tree filberts, I have correspondents in many foreign countries and have arranged for the delivery of several thousand pounds of these nuts to grow seedlings of.
The tree hazel is of the future as yet, and one must recognize the demand for layered stock until replaced by what appears to be better. To add at least thirty acres to my present filbert plantings this year is my desire. I am planting at least 400 trees to the acre as interplants in a grafted walnut orchard. No use in wasting time before the trees begin to bear profitable crops. Three and four years at most for man-sized returns when using a ten foot planting.
One planting of Du Chilly filberts last year produced an average of close to 40 pounds per tree on nine-year-old trees and an average of 10 pounds on four-year-old trees. The spread of the latter trees was scarce four feet, and I counted 22 nuts on a branch eight inches in length. Mr. A. W. Ward reports an average crop of 200 nuts to each two-year-old filbert tree in his four-acre planting this season. These are also Du Chillys that are fast building up a sentiment favoring them before the lower-priced Barcelona variety. The Barcelona is a more vigorous tree and shells out of the husk 75% whereas the Du Chilly is but 40% self husking, but that will not offset the differential of five to ten cents per pound in favor of the great, oblong nuts.
The walnut acreage of Washington and Oregon is approximately 12,000 acres and is now taking a new hold with all the additional planting being made up of grafted trees. The VROOMAN FRANQUETTE variety grafted on the California black walnut stock is the tree used in these plantings. Formerly, seedlings of the so-called second generation type were quite popular, but when it became evident that seedlings would not transmit the superior qualities of the parent, that method of propagation was thrown into the discard. Eight thousand acres of the acreage now out, are seedling trees that must be topworked before Oregon will be truly famous for the quality of the nuts it produces. These seedling trees are paying at present under our present high prices after many years of barrenness.
My own 900 seedling trees I top-worked last year to the Vrooman Franquette variety, placing as many as thirty grafts in some trees and obtained an average of 70 per cent successful grafts. These grafts have made wonderful growth this season, and are quite capable of bearing large quantities of nuts next season. My crew of walnut grafters are becoming well known over a radius of 100 miles, and the work they are doing is a road to profit for many an owner of unproductive nut trees.
This fall I intend publishing some of the leading articles of the nut-growing authorities of this section, in conjunction with a catalogue well illustrated and containing my experience as a nut grower. Anyone contemplating planting walnuts or filberts may well send in their reservation of copy. Generally speaking, nut tree nurserymen and nut tree planters have not had time nor desire to add to the literature on this subject. I believe that when the nurserymen get behind the move to plant nut trees there will be some very interesting developments. There is one good thing in sight, and that is that it will not be the old-fashioned seedling that they will push this time. I think that you people of the East have got to make another determined effort to drive home the impossibility of seedlings ever being satisfactory. Outside the association a nut tree is a nut tree regardless of seedling and grafted trees, and one is expected to bear just as many fine large nuts as the other and just as soon. After losing twenty to thirty thousand dollars in delayed returns from a seedling walnut orchard, is it any wonder that I oppose the planting of more seedlings by the unwary?
In concluding this report I wish to state that I have talked nuts before a score of different meetings during the last year, and in the press of Oregon and Washington have done much to encourage the prospective grower."
THE SECRETARY: It seems to me that this report is one that will be very useful to nut growers in the East and very suggestive to beginners in nut growing. I would like to ask Mr. Reed if he has any comments to make on the report.