Having been nominated vice-president of the association two years ago, it may be understood that I am in line for the presidency this year upon the retirement of our honorable president Mr. McGlennon. If so, I wish to ask the nominating committee not to consider my name as I cannot accept this responsibility. With the vast amount of correspondence incidental to supplying information to those wanting to engage in the growing of nuts or nut trees, and growing and selling nut trees, experimental work and breeding new types and varieties, I have my hands full and could not do this position justice. We also have members in the association better fitted for this position who can give it better thought and attention, and who can advance the association and the interests of nut growers more than I can, while I can be of more benefit to the association and the nut industry in general without taking on the duties imposed by any official position.
NOTES BY MR. BIXBY
Thursday, Sept. 27
Trip by automobiles to Mr. Littlepage's farm at Bowie, Md., and to the
U. S. Experiment Station at Bell.
Mr. Littlepage has an orchard of 275 trees covering thirty acres of pecans and Stabler black walnuts, the first pecan trees being set in 1914, and the Stabler black walnuts some three years later. Now both are starting to bear, a few nuts having appeared last year, and a very few nuts the year before.
The trees are growing finely, the leaves have a fine dark green color, and nuts were noticed in clusters, the pecans being in clusters of 2, 3, 4 and 5; and the black walnuts in ones and twos.
That the orchard has been given good care is evident. Commercial fertilizers and green manures have been used. A winter cover crop of rye was grown last fall and plowed under this spring, and a summer cover crop of soy beans was grown this summer and will be plowed under this fall.
The varieties noticed in bearing were the Major, the Greenriver, Stuart, Busseron and the Indiana. Of the above, all are northern varieties, excepting the Stuart, which is a southern variety which has given evidence elsewhere of being able to grow and to bear further north than almost any other southern variety.
The pecans are set in blocks, the earlier ones being set 60' x 60'. Mr. Littlepage became convinced after his first plantings that this was too close, and the last planting of pecans was 100' x 120'.
The black walnuts are planted along two fence rows, the trees being fifty feet apart, the total length of the rows being about three-quarters of a mile. The peculiarity of the Stabler black walnut of bearing some nuts where the kernel is in one piece, that is where one lobe of the kernel has not developed, was noticed in some of Mr. Littlepage's trees. There is going to be, in future years at Mr. Littlepage's place, an opportunity to study this peculiar behavior of the Stabler black walnut, that could be carried on at the parent tree only with great difficulty, because of the inaccessibility of the tree, in the first place, and the inaccessibility of the flowers, owing to their great height above the ground, in the second.