MR. LITTLEPAGE: I was just going to say, Mr. President, that I visited Mr. Reed's place this summer, and it is utterly surprising how fast and beautifully this hardy almond grew. He took me out at the edge of the garden where he has them growing, and I could hardly realize that they were only three-year-old trees. They were as full of little almonds as the peach trees were of peaches, only they were much longer and with very red leaves. Vincennes, Indiana, is on the thirty-ninth parallel, which is the northern boundary of the District of Columbia, and it gets much colder there than here, and those trees haven't the slightest sign of winter-killing. I don't know anything about the quality of the meat, but they are certainly wonderful bearers.
DR. MORRIS: I find that in the region of Stamford, Connecticut, hard shelled almonds do pretty well if you look after them pretty closely, but they take all your time. They have so many different blights on them that I am glad mine died a long time ago. They bore heavily, but they were too much trouble. They blossom so early in our locality that the blossoms are apt to be caught by frost. You may overcome that if you set the trees on the north side of a stone wall where the ground retains the frost for from one to two weeks later than on the south side. I find, that by doing this you can retard their time of blossoming sufficiently to materially lessen the danger of their being caught by spring frosts.
MR. HARRY R. WEBER: Will you get the same results if you put a mulch under the tree? Won't that prevent thawing and hold the tree for a week or two?
DR. MORRIS: Yes, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Have you used this particular almond?
DR. MORRIS: One very much like it, and it was a mighty good almond—hard to get at but good.
THE PRESIDENT: I would like to ask Mr. Reed as to the blooming time of this particular tree in comparison with some standard peach like the Elberta.
MR. M. P. REED: It bloomed about a week earlier than the Elberta, and the peach crop is light.
MR. HENRY STABLER: I have been associated for the past three or four years occasionally with Mr. M. B. Waite, of the Department of Agriculture, and I have had a good chance to study the effect of spraying on peaches in preventing brown rot and curculio. At Mr. Littlepage's I observed an almond tree that started, I should think, with twenty-five or thirty almonds on it this spring. Those almonds gradually succumbed to the curculio and brown rot until, at last, only one was left, and it seems to me that, if this almond is to be grown commercially in this climate, we will have to use the same methods of growing as with peaches, and we will have to spray them.
THE PRESIDENT: I think the chief benefit of the discussion of the almond would be to get more of us to try it, and the fact that we have one which is only one week earlier than the Elberta peach in blooming shows that we have a good chance, possibly, of even exceeding the possibilities of the peaches.