THE PRESIDENT: To my mind nut growing is part of a larger field, a field of conservation, one which is going to develop a whole new series of tree crops, of which the nuts are but a part.
PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS.
DR. J. RUSSELL SMITH.
Agriculture is usually symbolized by a picture showing a man, a plow, and a sheaf of wheat. I would make the symbolization double by adding to it some kind of a nut tree in fruit. I have long had a vision of waving, sturdy, fruitful trees yielding nuts and other valuable fruit, and standing on our hilly and rocky land where now the gully and other signs of poverty, destruction and desolation gape at us. This vision of the fruitful tree also extends to the arid lands, there also vastly increasing our productive areas. Beyond a doubt the tree is the greatest engine of production nature has given us, and in its ability to yield harvests without soil injury on rough, rocky, and steep lands, and on arid lands, carries the possibility of the approximate doubling of the area of first-class cropping land in the United States, also probably in many other countries.
Twenty-one years ago this spring I began in a small way to bring into reality this vision of the tree-covered fruitful hills, although my interest in the matter goes back at least four years further to the time when I filled my pockets with the large grafted European chestnuts grown along his lanes by the late Edwin Satterthwaite, of Jenkintown, Pa.
My first essay at nut tree cropping was short but not sweet. I planted an acre and a half of Persian walnuts, seedlings being the only things then to be found. There being no one within my reach to guide me much, if any, I bought such seedlings as were to be had from a New Jersey nurseryman. I mulched them, and saw them each year grow less and less until the third season they disappeared. I have, however, some survival from this attempt in the form of black walnuts, which I had the foresight to plant as nuts immediately beside the Persian walnuts when they were planted as trees. Some of these walnuts are now quite sturdy young trees ready to be top-worked to some good strain.
My second attempt was the Paragon chestnut. In 1897 I started in on a 100-acre tract on the Blue Ridge Mountains, near Bluemont, Va., much of it too rocky for any cultivated crop, but admirably fitted to native chestnuts, and covered with a perfect stand. I had a good many acres well established, when, in 1908, the chestnut blight convinced me that further extension was perilous. My orchard has since been given over to the Department of Agriculture as the scene of their experiments in fighting the chestnut blight, but they have given it up, withdrawn their efforts, and half the orchard is now cut down and planted to Winesap and Grimes Golden Apples, which ten year's experience has shown me can be grown on such land without cultivation if mulched with the weeds and bushes that grow around them, and given some commercial fertilizer. I have a number of such young trees planted in 1907 in land of this character that are now full of fine quality fruit.
My third nut-growing attempt was with more select strains of seedling English walnuts than the miserable chancelings with which I began. One tree from the magnificent specimens at 3115 O street, N. W., Washington, D. C., and several from Pomeroy, promptly perished, apparently from winter-killing, and my nut hopes were at a very low ebb when the Northern Nut Growers' Association came upon my intellectual horizon. From it I have learned how to graft the walnut, the pecan and other hickories, and I have again started in on the English walnut, using the Mayette, Franquette, and several of the eastern seedlings. After the usual disastrous failures at top-working, I was this June in such a large condition of hope that I was in serious need of being hooped to keep myself down to normal size. Such artificial aids to the maintenance of normal size are, however, no longer necessary after this summer's experiences, during which the bud-worm has cut the ends of my Persian walnut shoots and the blight apparently has withered up my young grafts so that an 18 inch shoot of July 1st is now 17 inches black and 1 inch brownish green, and in other cases entirely dead. Alas what a slaughter! This apparently puts my Persian walnut hopes into a state of neutrality. I hope it is benevolent neutrality. So far as actual expecting is concerned, however, I am not doing any just now. I wait.
The grafted black walnuts, however, have met with none of these accidents, and these are a substantial and solid hope, as is the pecan, which is behaving handsomely on its own roots and also on the hickory roots.
Tree Crops Insurance.