My nut plantings are mostly young, many just coming into bearing, while many others have been top-worked to better varieties, so that money returns are not what they would be had I started out planting improved varieties. Part of my aim was to originate better varieties than we had when I began. In this, I think, I have been fairly successful.
My plantings consist mostly of chestnuts. These have sold readily at 35 to 40 cents per pound wholesale. It is rather a hard matter to give any idea as to profit, except that we gathered 23 pounds from one tree five years after topworking on a tree then about three inches in diameter. In 1920, the net return was $1,172.54, in 1921, $1,019.44, in 1922, which was about a half crop, $1,196.81. All this on land so rough no crop could be grown on it but pasture. This year's crop promises to be a full one.
As to walnuts, we have made no record of single trees. The Thomas, by actual test, gives ten pounds of meat to the bushel, which we sold to dealers last season at $1.00 per pound, and could not nearly supply the demand.
Walnut crop here a failure this season. Only a few Thomas trees have a crop.
If the meeting was after nut harvest, I would send the best chestnut exhibit that has ever been shown at any meeting.
H. C. Fletcher of Clarkson, N. Y., was quoted as estimating the nuts produced from two trees each year from 1911 to 1915 as $25 worth. (Presumably these were Persian walnuts, but this was not stated.) In 1916 and 1917 there were about six bushels of nuts, probably $75 worth. In 1918 a market basket full. In 1919 and 1920 about $40 worth, including some trees sold. In 1921 about $50 worth were produced and in 1922 $60 worth of nuts and $30 worth of trees.
In the president's own filbert nursery at Rochester over 300 pounds of fine nuts were produced for which 30 cents a pound were offered by grocerymen.
Mr. W. R. Mattoon of the Forest Service of the U. S. Dept. of
Agriculture spoke as follows:
Two years ago, when the Forest Service was planning to get up a bulletin on growing walnut trees for timber, we found the need to include information on the nuts also. Mr. C. A. Reed and I together prepared a manuscript on growing the walnut tree both for timber and for nuts.
It pays to grow walnuts in small groups and singly, rather than in large blocks, for while they have not proven altogether failures when planted in large quantities they have been disappointing. Many of the trees which we planted as close as 6 x 8 feet several years ago, have not given very satisfactory results because they have not had enough light and air. The black walnut grows singly in the forest, although there may be full stands of other trees around it. Our idea is to recommend planting the black walnut in spots around on the farm, in little inaccessible places and on the hillsides, where the soil is good; for the black walnut requires good soil, and we cannot find that quality in large patches, nor is it usual on slopes of ground. So we must put it here and there on the farm, along the fence rows and in various places, but not in groups. The farmer planting in this way becomes its wood which is used in the most expensive furniture. I believe that mahogany is the only other wood so valuable. On the other side of the world they have the mahogany tree for cabinet use, and here in America we have the black walnut, a cabinet wood that is not surpassed.