The bearing record of these trees has been given before but I will summarize them by years again: 1937—118 pounds; 1938 (no records); 1939-463 pounds; 1940—250 pounds; 1941—564 pounds; 1942—658 pounds; 1943—749 pounds; 1944—678 pounds; 1945—250 pounds; 1946—1,100 pounds; this year's crop will probably run 700 to 800 pounds.
The trees seem to bear much the same, with No. 14 the poorest and No. 19 the best and, like many other tree crops, they tend to alternate good and poor crops on each tree. The nuts are of good size, averaging 40 to 50 per pound (green) with No. 6 and No. 19 bearing the smallest nuts. They ripen in September with the exception of No. 19 which is a month later. Mr. Reed likes No. 16 which has a wrinkled shell. All the nuts are medium sweet to sweet and all of them fall free of the bur. I think the most significant thing is that at least 12 of the trees have nut characteristics so near alike that they are about indistinguishable, which certainly makes them a good source of seed.
The similarity of the nuts brings up the controversial subject of the seedling raised tree, and I will make some remarks in defense of this method.
1. All our parent trees are good bearers.
2. There is no extraneous pollen in the vicinity.
3. I will present as a question: Has the Chinese chestnut, like the rose and the apple been hybridized out of all semblance of the wild form?
4. The seedling tree should bring chestnuts to the average householder's table 30 years sooner than grafting will.
5. We now produce a 3'-4' tree for a very reasonable figure.
6. All varietal forms at present are as yet unstabilized (most varieties of 10 years ago have been discarded). There will probably be some duds in seedling trees, but we've had no local complaints and I wonder if they will exceed the "troubles" found in the grafted tree. We have had customers brag about what their 2 or 3 or 6 trees bore.
To prove our faith in this method we planted a test orchard. When the trees were 3 years old from 2 year transplants they bore 25 pounds. Next year, 1944, they bore 800 pounds or an average of 1 pound per tree. Right then and there we thought that we would have a real story to tell, but we had misfortune in another direction. Three years in a row we have had frosts when 6 inches of new growth were on these trees (the orchard is not as well situated as the parent trees in this respect). So we had no crops worth mentioning but neither did we have strawberries or similar fruits. This year the orchard was frosted 2/3 the way to the top so we will get quite a few nuts, maybe 500 pounds. Incidentally, we have been here 25 years and we've not had frosts like these before.