In the year 1910 three nut nurseries were established here in Southern Indiana, two of which have long since been discontinued. Before that time a very few propagated pecan trees had been produced in an experimental way by some fruit tree nurserymen.
Little did I realize at that time the trials and headaches that lay in the path I was to travel in this venture, such as locating the parent trees, securing the graft and budwood from them, learning to keep this wood from time of cutting until used, methods of propagation, trying to educate the prospective tree buyer as to the value of these trees, and to believe that pecan trees could be transplanted, and that they would bear if the taproot had been cut, and many other things.
Production of nut trees in nurseries in this northern territory is so different, and more difficult than in the Gulf Coast country, where I spent a part of two seasons hoping to get information that would be of value here. What I learned there was of little or no value here, so it was up to us to solve our own problems in this section by experience, as there was very little in print at that time on Northern nut tree propagation.
One of our first problems was to learn to keep cions from time of cutting until time of use, not knowing when that time was. We tried all times from March until May, having little success at any time. At first we kept the scions in a cold storage plant in Evansville, and at a temperature of around 32 degrees, and in wet moss. Later we found it much better to keep scions at home in a cellar at a higher temperature, and in only slightly dampened sphagnum moss.
In the beginning our efforts were mostly in grafting, then after a year or two of failure, probably largely due to the way we kept our scions, we had some results at the McCoy Nursery, with scions kept at home. The McCoy Nursery was about four miles from my place, and located in a sandy soil with a near quicksand sub-soil. At that location they were later reasonably successful in grafting, using the modified cleft graft.
My nursery is in clay soil with a hard stratum of soil three or four feet below the surface, and because of this I have been unable to graft pecans in the nursery, though I have tried every known method, and under all conditions. I could successfully graft at the McCoy Nursery, then use the same scion wood and the same method at home, but have a complete failure; therefore, I turned to budding entirely on pecans in the nursery.
It is somewhat different with walnut—I can get fair results with walnut grafting at times, though I do very little of this, as more than 95% of my walnut trees are produced by budding.
I do a lot of topworking on native seedling nut trees for others. Mr. Sly, who is with me, and I make one or more of these trips each spring. For this work I use only the slip-bark method, shaping the scion a little differently from any other I have ever seen used. This has given splendid results everywhere I have used it, which has been over the territory from Ohio to Oklahoma.
A certain amount of allowance is made in this work as to safe drainage of the stock, depending on weather and soil conditions, which vary as, to season and location.
I do practically all of my nursery propagating by budding, and one of the most essential things is to have favorable sap conditions in budwood as well as in stocks.