So let your seedlings grow up and down happily while you get ready the stuff with which to build their future character, for seedling trees are very slow in coming into bearing, and uncertain in type and quality of nut. Grafted trees bear early and true to type.
Take your choicest bit of ground and put it in the best shape you know how. Then order the finest grafted trees you can find on the market. (See circular on "Seedsmen and Nurserymen".) Your choice will be limited for there are as yet only a few grafted varieties of the Persian walnut and the Indiana pecan, and but one of the shagbark hickory to be had. Of chestnuts there are more and, in the South of course, plenty of pecans. But pecan growing in the South is another story. If you order chestnuts be sure that they do not come from a nursery infected with blight. Get young trees because they are more easily established.
Order from two to four of each variety. Fewer than two gives too small an allowance for mortality and more than four, besides the not inconsiderable strain on the pocket, will divide your attention too much; for you have got to give these trees the care of a bottle baby.
Set them sixty feet apart if you have the room. If not set them closer. Better closer if that means better care. They may be set in the fall but probably spring is better, as early as you can get them in. Follow the instructions of the nurserymen closely. Digging holes with dynamite is probably good practice. Put some bone meal in the soil around the roots but no strong fertilizer. Some soils need lime. Tamp the soil about the roots with all your might. It cannot be made too firm.
Then water them all summer, or until August if they have made a good growth. Give them all they can drink once a week. Sink a large bar about a foot from the tree and pour the water into the hole, as much as the soil will take.
Keep up cultivation and a dust mulch or, if you cannot do this, mulch with something else. Mulching doesn't mean a wisp of hay but something thick or impervious. Six inches of strawy manure, grass, vines or weeds; an old carpet, burlap, feed or fertilizer bags or even newspapers, held down with stones or weeds or earth, all make good mulches.
These trees ought to grow and, whether you ever succeed in grafting your seedlings or not, you should have at least a small orchard of fine nut trees.
The second summer with the trees will be something like the baby's. Worms may bother them. Look out for bud worms and leaf-eating caterpillars. Give them all the water they can drink in the dry dog days. Nurse them, feed them and watch them and they will grow up to bless you. Some of them may bear as early as apple trees.
These trees, and such scions as, from time to time, you may obtain elsewhere, are to furnish your propagating material.
The plan just described may be modified in various ways, but the general principles are the same. Instead of planting the nuts in their permanent positions they may be put in nursery rows where they may have the advantage of intensive cultivation. The best of the resulting trees may be grafted or budded in the rows, or after they have been transplanted and have become well established. This method is an excellent one and has distinct advantages and many advocates.