Is the Information We Have on Orchard Fertility of Value in the Nut Grove?
By Prof. F. N. Fagan, Professor of Pomology
The Pennsylvania State College
Many of the association members present are also general fruit orchard owners of this state. I am glad to meet with you and must confess that it has been many years since I have had the pleasure of attending the annual meeting of this association. To be exact, the last meeting I attended was the annual meeting held in Lancaster some seven years ago. It is not that the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station lacks interest in nut culture that keeps it from doing work along nut investigational lines, but because the older and more extensive apple, peach, cherry, grape and berry industries have called upon the resources of the station to its working capacity.
When Mr. Hershey wrote asking me to speak before this meeting I felt that the only information we had at the station that would fit into the picture was the information we have regarding orchard fertility. I therefore gave him the subject, "Is the information we now have on general orchard fertility of value in the nut grove?"
First, let me touch upon some of the papers given this morning. I think it would be well for the nut meat industry to look into the department of health's requirements governing the health inspection of workers handling food products. I also suggest looking into the possibility of the selling of nuts and nut meats by interested high school boys and girls in our many towns and cities.
The question of annual bearing of nut trees is a subject needing investigation. I rather expect we shall find that this factor is closely connected with over-production of a tree one year, fertility and moisture supply, or, in other words, the nuts may be much like apples. While the nature of tree growth may tend to cause trees to be alternate producers, man may upset this natural habit to some extent by proper cultural practices and thus cause the tree to produce, not a full crop in the off year but at least some fruits that will be on the profit side.
As to the toxic effect of some of our nut trees upon growth of other plants growing near by, I rather expect we shall find as time goes on that instead of the trees having a toxic effect they have a robbing effect upon soil moisture and food. One thing that leads me to this belief is that years ago we taught that one reason for seeding a cover crop in the orchard was to have the cover take the moisture from the soil in the fall of the year and in that way check tree growth. We now know that a mature apple or peach tree will reverse this during the growing season and will take its full share of moisture and food from the soil and really take these away from the cover crop. We saw this occur during the dry years of 1929 and 1930 with covers that had been seeded in June. During both these years, in our orchard blocks where the water holding capacity of the soil was low, the cover died over the tree root feeding spaces. Some may have said that the trees were having a toxic effect upon the soil. This was not the case for, in 1932 and 1933, both years of plenty of moisture supply, the covers have grown well around the trees in these blocks.
I shall now ask you to refer to the conclusions on page 3 of our Bulletin No. 294, issued by The Pennsylvania State College, which has just been distributed to you. These conclusions are, of course, based upon our work in an apple orchard but I believe they will apply closely to the management of nut orchards.