"What is your ONE greatest source of success?" The answers seem to show many royal roads, each of which was the one road for someone. The answers: Mulching young trees; watering care; planting seeds; planting one-year seedlings; wrapping-with paper; 50% moist peat mixed with earth in transplanting; manure; sod in bottom of planting hole and use of nitrogen later; setting trees at bottom of slopes; clean cultivation until August then sowing rye, soy beans or cow peas as cover crops to turn under in spring; topworking hickories; grafting in cool, moist spring weather; pigs in orchard; chickens in orchard; planting 12-14-foot trees severely cut back, burlap wrapped, heavily mulched.
It seems a pity that limitations of space do not permit the telling of the various stories connected with the above glimpses of successful solutions. Each represents a little or a big success story connected with an individual problem. It is sufficient, perhaps, to know that someone somewhere found that each was the answer to his own difficulties.
The next question brings out the reverse side of the planters' work: "What is your chief source of failure?" The answer most often given was the honest one, lack of attention. We can all convict ourselves here, either involuntarily or otherwise. Especially during this period of warfare, when so many have been taken away from their plantings and have been unable to get help, there is no question but that our trees have suffered. The next in frequency is "unsuitable soil." Following this come: lack of water; poor planting; planting too big a tree; spring planting of nut trees; buying 5 to 7 year-old trees; climate; transplanting failures; grafting; grafting in dry, hot, springs; top-working old trees; stink bugs on filberts (nuts); lack of drainage; forcing with nitrogenous fertilizer; fertilizing young trees too much; birds breaking off top growth. It had been the intention to confine this question to young trees, but it was not so phrased, so we shall let the answers stand as they are. It is a bit ironical that some found their chief source of failure exactly where others had made their best success. The explanation must lie in differences in technique, in soil or in some other local condition. Skill, knowledge, and persistence must always play a great part in any success.
We next asked, "What have been your chief difficulties with established, bearing trees?" The difficulties here shift from matters of soil, rodent protection and the like to other types; caterpillars, neglect, winter injury, limited crops, failure of nuts to fill, disappointing quality of nuts, bag and tent worms, blight, "blight" due to drought, too early leaf fall, insects in early spring, trees drowned out in flooded bottom lands. It is probable that this last disaster happened to younger trees.
As to the species of trees chiefly damaged by these causes, black walnut comes first (possibly because more of these trees have been planted), then hickories, Persian walnuts, chestnuts (blight), heartnuts, pecans, filberts, butternuts, and finally butternuts in the south areas from fungus troubles.
Trees reported to have been least damaged were, first, butternuts, then hazels and filberts, black walnuts, hickories, Manchurian walnuts, Jap. walnuts, heartnuts, chestnuts, pecans, Persian walnuts.
In response to the specific question, "What insects damaged the trees?", we found that walnut caterpillars were more common than any others, followed closely by web or "tent" worms. The Japanese beetle is a close second and is broadening its entrenched positions steadily. Others are flat-headed apple borers, lace-wing fly, aphis, leaf hoppers. To this list two reporters added sapsuckers among the insects. These birds would almost girdle some of the branches with punctures.
Insect damage was reported as serious by eight reporters, as slight or occasional by six, and of yearly occurrence by nearly all. Others reported damage as serious if not controlled.
"What do you do to control the insects?" was then asked. Most of the answers referred to clustering types of insects and involved removal of the clusters by burning, by cutting off the infested twigs, or by scraping off the clusters from the trunks in the early morning or late evening. Others sprayed with lead arsenate, "sprayed in late summer with lead arsenate", sprayed with nicotine sulphate for aphis and lice. Other methods mentioned were early cultivation, shaking the tree with a pole early and often, and chickens in the grove. Some of these means are adapted manifestly, to small plantings and others to larger groves. None mentioned the attracting of birds by plantings of trees or shrubs that bear berries or small seeds. When trees are tall enough to be beyond reach of poles or sprays, the birds become more essential as insect destroyers.
"What insects damage the nuts?" Weevil, by long odds. Next come husk maggots or "shock worms", codling moth larvae, borers, stink bugs on filberts, butternut curculio. No cure is given for this trouble except the very valuable one of keeping chickens, or, better still, turkeys running freely in the plantation. Clean cultivation will, of course, destroy many larvae that hibernate under trash.