Mr. Hutt: If you have ever seen the roots of a long leaf pine, you've seen where the roots go to when they get a chance.
Prof. Smith: I should like to ask Dr. Deming if he would give us his experience in propagating the walnut and hickory?
Dr. Deming: A very important thing indeed for us nut growers in the North is to learn how to propagate. Dr. Morris has had some success; I haven't had any. I have tried it summer and spring, year after year. I believe there are a few pieces of bark, without buds, still growing. Chestnuts I haven't found very difficult, but with the walnut and hickory I have had no success whatever, although I have practiced the best technique I could master. I think one reason why I have had no success is that I haven't had good material. I have had good stocks, but I haven't had good scions, not the sort of scion that the successful southern nurserymen use. Still, Dr. Morris has had success with the same kind of material that I have failed with.
The Chairman: Not very much success.
Mr. Lake: Dr. Deming said that the land ought not to be too dry nor too wet. Would you feel like saying that a water-table at 24 inches was neither too low nor too high?
Mr. Hutt: It depends a great deal on the nature of the soil, the water-pulling capacity of the soil. Take a soil like that I mentioned, in Hyde County, near the ocean; you can see it quake all around you.
Mr. Lake: But would you say that the northern nut grower might safely put his orchard on soil that had a water-table within two or three feet of the surface?
Mr. Hutt: I could tell if I saw that soil. If it is craw-fishy, or soil that is ill-drained or won't carry ordinary crops, I'd say keep off of it, but if it will bear ordinary crops it's all right; in some cases where the soil is very rich the plant does not need to go down into that soil anything like the depth it would in a poor soil. The poorer the soil the further the roots have to go to find nourishment.
Mr. Lake: I think that is an extremely exceptional case in relation to northern nuts. There is very little such North Carolina land in this section of the country, if I judge right. We don't plant nut-growing orchards up here in peaty soils, so Dr. Deming's recommendation was rather for very good agricultural soil. A water-table here must be eight or ten feet deep; in that event, it would not make any difference whether you left three feet of tap-root or 15 inches.
Mr. Hutt: No.