Mr. W. C. Reed: I think it is very important that walnut grafting wood should be cut before severe weather in the winter, though I don't think it ever grows cold enough to hurt pecan wood. You need not worry about pecan wood, but in the case of the walnut it should be cut before extreme cold weather and put in cold storage. I cut some last year after the extreme cold snap in December and we threw it practically all away this spring. It is useless. You are throwing away your time to use it.
Mr. Jones: I don't think we had any wood that was not injured during the cold winter of 1911-12. Out of about 2,600 grafts set we had two grow.
Question: What do you mean by cold storage?
Mr. W. C. Reed: I have been storing all of our wood in ordinary apple cold storage plants. Pack it in damp moss or excelsior. Paper line your boxes well, and nail them up, and leave them there until you are ready to use them. I have put wood in in November and taken it out in good shape in August. Pecan wood can be held the year round.
The President: What can you tell us, Mr. White, that has not yet been covered?
Mr. Paul White: About all I would care to say about topworking would be to ask a question. They claim that the pecan topworked on the hickory, only bears for a few years, and then stops. What would be the result in the case of the English and black walnuts? Might there not be some danger there?
The President: I have made considerable investigation of this. I have found several English walnuts topworked on black walnuts, one done eighty years ago down in Maryland. The tree is reported to have borne twenty-five bushels of nuts. I think there is good explanation for the pecan-hickory trouble. A hickory grows for a short time in early summer and does not grow much, but a pecan grows twice as much. Therefore the hickory roots cannot feed the pecan top enough to make both vegetation and fruit. We are, in this city, in a very unusual place. Not only is it the center of a great wealth of seedling Persian walnut trees, but we have in the parks a great tree collection under Superintendent Laney. This is a very fine and notable collection, including American and foreign trees, some of which we will see this afternoon.
Adjournment at 12:12 P.M.
Photographs of the convention were then taken on the steps of the City Hall.