For some reason or other we have not all the facts. We can propagate splendidly one year, and the next year we have a fall-down. Mr. Roper, of one of the pioneer nurseries, said he had 2,000 fine live walnut buds last fall, and had but 500 this spring, and not one of them grew. While the technique seems to be simple, there seems to be something lacking in our experience. I will ask Mr. Littlepage to give us his confessions first.
Mr. Littlepage: The proposition of topworking is one of the schemes where art beats nature. In the fight in Congress over the oleomargarine bill some years ago, one member who favored it, said in support of his contention, that nature always beat art; and one of his opponents immediately referred him to a picture gallery near, where pictures of the statesmen were exhibited, as a proof that art sometimes beats nature. In top working, art improves upon nature.
The first thing to be considered is what is topworking, and then the logical question, why topworking. Possibly this should come first. If an individual is dissatisfied with his friends and neighbors, he must put up with them; he cannot change them. But if he is dissatisfied with a nut tree, it is his own fault if he does not change it. It can be top worked. He does not care to top work maples or oaks. We only top work to get something better than we have. The trees, of course, that interest us specially in top working are the nut trees. We have seedling pecans, seedling walnuts, seedling hickories, and seedling chestnuts. Down at the mouth of Green River in Kentucky are nearly two hundred acres of wild pecan trees. So far as we know there are only two trees in that orchard worthy of propagation. Of thousands of trees there we have propagated only two varieties. These trees are now too large to top work, but had it been possible 150 years ago to go in there and select the desirable nuts, and topwork all the other trees with these, there could have been a great orchard there now of the highest quality nuts.
Topworking consists in cutting off the top of some undesirable seedling and replacing it with scions or buds from some desirable variety. It is just the same as any other grafting or budding process. Almost any size tree can be topworked but, of course, the larger the tree the more difficult the operation. A young tree, from two to five inches in diameter, can be sawed off four or five feet above the ground and topworked by grafting from two to four scions on it, by the slip bark process. If the tree is larger than five inches in diameter, it is better to go up to the first branches, saw off part of them and proceed just as if each branch were itself a small tree. If the tree is a large tree, with a number of branches or prongs, it is best to work part of them one year and leave the remaining branches to maintain the root system. It would probably kill a large tree to cut the whole top off at one time. I have seen trees, two feet in diameter, successfully topworked. It sometimes happens that the scions placed in the tree, in the spring, for some reason or other, do not grow. The tree then sends up nice green shoots that later in the season can be budded into just as if they were small seedlings. The wild black walnut trees, growing around the fields and hills, can all be very easily topworked to the English walnut by the slip bark method. The scions must be dormant and the tree starting into active growth.
The wild hickory, wild pecan and wild black walnut trees, offer the best field for profitable work along this line. We have topworked a great many hickories to pecan, but we do not expect permanent satisfactory results. The experience of the pecan on the hickory is not very satisfactory. The hickory is a dense, hard wood, that has a short growing season, and matures its nuts early; the pecan is of the coarser, faster growing wood, whose nuts grow until late in the fall. This inconsistency of the growing habits of the two trees prevents the pecan top on the hickory from producing normal crops of nuts. The pecan topworked to the pecan, however, is a perfect success and there is no reason why the wild hickories of all descriptions cannot be successfully and profitably topworked to the better varieties of the good shagbark hickories. I believe that there are great opportunities in the state of New York for successful nut culture by utilizing the wild black walnut trees and the hickories. I have seen hundreds of English walnut trees growing around Rochester, some of them bearing perfectly wonderful crops of walnuts. I am surprised that the people in this section have not availed themselves more of the opportunities along this line. If the farmers in this section would take up nut growing as a side proposition and set five or ten acres of nut trees on each farm, they would soon find that these nut trees would be producing them more than all the balance of their farms. We hear a great deal today about the back to the farm movement, but my opinion is that for everyone who is going to the farm, ten are leaving it, and the reason for this is that the heavy operating expense of the annual crops, such as corn, wheat and potatoes, etc., lay such a heavy toll on the farmer that farming is not profitable. The requirements of time, labor and money in producing these crops are so great that it discourages many farmers. I have made the statement to some of the farmers in my part of the country that they must produce alfalfa or go broke. I believe that alfalfa and tree crops will be two of the greatest factors in the rehabilitation of the farm, especially the nut trees, for the reason that nut trees do not require the same high degree of care, spraying, pruning, as do apple and peach trees, nor are the products as perishable. A crop of nuts can be harvested and stacked up in barrels, and boxes, in the smoke house, the barn or in a flat car and go to the market tomorrow, next week or next month.
Recurring to the advantage of topworking, however, it meets the objection that is often raised by those who say they have not time to wait for the nut trees to grow. Of course, this is a perfectly foolish statement; they are going to wait anyhow; it is simply a question as to whether they wait for something or nothing, and trees grow into maturity in a surprisingly short time. A few years ago, when I was setting out an orchard of nut trees, a neighbor of mine came over and looked very doubtfully with a trace of pity in his expression and said, "When do you expect all those trees that you are setting to bear?" I replied, "I am not sure, but I do know that they will bear a long time before those trees that you are not setting." Topworking, however, gives quick results and enables one to take advantage of the long-established thrifty root systems of the wild black walnuts, hickories and pecans growing in economic spots, around the fences, corners, creeks and hillsides.
Mr. Jones: In all our grafting we cut the cleft; we don't split it. The slip bark method is better in some cases.
Mr. President: What is the size limit for the slip bark method?
Mr. Jones: Anything less than two inches we would cut.