Judge Potter has over twenty acres of pecans interplanted with chestnuts and filberts. For part of the orchard this is the fifth growing season. The trees are growing vigorously and make a very impressive showing. I counted thirty-nine nuts on a representative Thomas black walnut tree. The filberts look especially promising. Although the weather at blooming time was unfavorable a fair crop of nearly a peck was gathered from four or five bushes of a late blooming imported variety. Judge Potter is also growing another orchard using apples as fillers between black walnut trees. This experiment will be watched with great interest since it will be of great value in showing future possibilities in nut growing in Illinois.
Now as to some of the things we are trying to do at the experiment station at Urbana. This will be necessarily a progress report. I am making a survey of the state to find promising individuals of the different species and varieties and marking them for future use. We have our state fair at Springfield next week and as I speak to the boys and girls attending the state fair school I hope to interest them to tell me of any trees in their neighborhoods of particular value.
Some of the agricultural leaders in the various counties, that is the farm advisers, are awake to the value of the nut industry and we have a number of these men co-operating with us. From Gallatin County, in the Wabash and Ohio river bottoms, around $100,000 worth of native pecans are sold in some seasons. In the southern counties and over north of St. Louis in the western part of Illinois there are also native pecan groves which are quite profitable. We hope to find valuable northern pecans, adaptable to our conditions. We, of course, know that the English walnut is very difficult to grow in Illinois and we are not recommending it as a commercial proposition. We believe that the black walnut, all things considered, has the most promise and we hope to have something worth while in a few years as propagating material. The Thomas, Stabler, and Miller are especially to be recommended for Illinois at this time.
We hope soon to have a complete collection of hardy nut trees on our experimental trial grounds. Here we shall study not only the varietal characteristics but try out new methods of propagating, pruning, fertilizing, etc. There is very likely some connection between winter injury and hardening up of the wood in autumn and we hope to learn something about that problem through the use of various cover crops, for example. We have at the station a complete experimental cold storage plant in operation where we may be able to learn more about the effects of extremes of temperature on the roots and trunks of certain species.
In such new but important work we must make haste slowly. We have some things to unlearn and many things to learn. We hope to be able in a few years to make a worthwhile contribution to such an interesting and important subject as nut growing in the middle west.
I shall be glad to have you ask me any questions which occur to you.
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THE PRESIDENT: DO you happen to know Mr. Spencer?
PROF. COLBY: No, I wrote Mr. Spencer but I did not get any reply from him. I hope to visit him this fall.
MR. REED: DO you know anything about the top-working of black walnuts from Missouri at the university?