Third. What varieties of black walnut are most promising?
Fourth. Is the Thomas black walnut better than many others that have been brought to notice?
Fifth. What are the best methods of propagating?
Now, we have no set paper on that subject. I will call on ex-President
Littlepage to make a few sallies concerning the black walnut.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the black walnut ought to be the easiest subject in the world to talk about. It is a question of how much one ought not to say, however, in a limited time. The pecan tree was my first love. I shall always stick to the pecan. But if I were called upon today, to point out to this Association or to any prospective grower who actually wants to make money raising nuts, and who wants something that will pay the grocery bill and his sixty or ninety day notes, I think I should tell them to plant the black walnut. And I don't think, either, that that is treason, because I think, as we go through with this programme, the pecan will be properly taken care of.
In the first place, the black walnut is a native tree. I have seen it growing, too, on the Gulf of Mexico, and in the Dominion of Canada. Most native trees are immune to fungous and bacterial diseases that destroy so many trees. The black walnut is a hardy tree, and a fine timber proposition. In the second place, it is a fast growing tree. I don't knew just how quickly one could actually produce a black walnut orchard, but, outside of a few trees, such as the black locust and a number of others that do not produce nuts, the black walnut is one of the fastest growers. If you will feed a young walnut tree a small application of wood ashes and some stable manure it will commonly make a growth of six or seven feet a year. Therefore, you don't have to wait a long time for walnut trees to come into bearing.
It is easy to propagate the black walnut. Cleft grafting is one of the simplest methods in the spring. Dormant wood, cut in February or March and put in cold storage, and cleft grafted in the spring, ought to give from sixty to seventy per cent of success. I haven't had experience budding, but those who have say it is easy. Mr. Roper says it is, but grafting is easy and simple. The walnut, like other nut trees, must be propagated by budding or grafting in order to come true. It will not come true from seed.
Up until a few years ago I seldom saw a whole half of a black walnut. The ordinary black walnut cracks about like this (showing picture). Here is a black walnut cracked with two halves, and you can't even see the kernel. The two upper pictures show very beautiful walnuts, but they defy you to get out a whole kernel.
Now, then, when you come to a black walnut like this (showing picture), where you can crack out anywhere from fifty to seventy-five per cent of whole halves, and many entirely whole kernels, the most important problem is solved, and the black walnut has come into the competition.
This variety was discovered by Henry Stabler, and I named it after him. Perhaps one out of every ten of these nuts furnishes a whole, solid, undivided kernel. The other walnut is the ordinary field walnut that has little commercial value for the reason that you can't get the kernels out. It wouldn't make any difference if the nuts grew as big as pumpkins and a million of them on a tree if you couldn't get the meat out of them. I suppose no one will question that the black walnut will grow and bear almost anywhere. It is a weed tree in this part of the country. On President Smith's farm last year I saw them growing everywhere. They grow and bear all over the fields. And, as I said, the question of propagation is rather simple. I think the great trouble we are up against on the farm in America is labor, and that is because you cannot afford to pay good labor. You want a superabundance of laborers in the summer time for two or three months, and expect them to loaf all winter. The farm proposition isn't a profitable one, very largely because of the question of labor, and the farmers of this country must produce something profitable enough to enable them to hire and pay high-grade labor the year round, or they will go broke. They must raise such crops as Alfalfa that they can feed to their dairy cattle, and tree crops that they can use their labor on in the winter time. Nine men are leaving the farm today for every one going there. If you don't believe it, read the census statistics. The reason is labor and because you can't afford to pay it. I don't think there is any profit in selling the black walnut as a nut, but there will be profit in gathering that nut, storing it, and, when your farm crops are all in and you are ready to discharge the labor, put up an ordinary cheap cracking shed and let them crack the nuts for you, and sell the meats. That solves the question of what to do with farm labor in the winter time. The walnuts return about ten pounds of meat to a bushel, and a good cracker ought to crack from four to six bushels of nuts a day. Suppose you get only twenty-five cents a pound for the meats and your men crack only three bushels a day, each there is $7.50 a day coming in from each cracker, and, besides, you have made a valuable employment for your labor through the winter, and you can afford to pay them for their work. That is why I say the black walnut is, to my mind, one of the best commercial propositions.