THE SOUTHERN AREA. There are no nurserymen who report from the southern area. Practically all are interested in the production of nuts, but they are more alive than their northern neighbors to the value of timber, and more of them count upon it for a part of their profit from the planting of nut trees.
Interest is about equally divided between methods of propagation, grafting, budding, top-working, planting seed of better varieties, artificial cross-pollination, and searching their neighborhoods for wild trees that show promise of superiority.
The species being planted experimentally or commercially are, in order of precedence, black walnut, persimmon, pecan, Persian walnut, Chinese chestnut, hickories, filberts, hazels, heartnuts, Jap chestnuts, almonds, mulberry, native chestnuts, Jap walnuts, pawpaws and beech. Species of wild trees found locally follow closely the pattern of planting mentioned above, which is as it should be.
Climatic conditions are, in-general, favorable. Peaches are in most places reliably hardy. Lowest temperatures normally expected range from 22° above to 20° below zero; and the highest normal summer temperatures range from 90° to 115°. Dates of normal late spring frosts have a very wide spread, being all the way from March 1 to May 12. Normal early frost expectancy is from Oct. 10 to Nov. 15. All long-season crops mature well. The chief climatic enemies are drought and hot, dry winds.
As to growth conditions, clay soils predominate, but with plenty of loamy bottom land for nut planting. Acid soils predominate somewhat over lime soils, growing more unfavorably alkaline in the south-west.
Cultural practices are generally the same as in the north, but with a greater proportionate use of mowing and mulching, no doubt induced by the need for protection against greater heat, as well as for conservative of moisture. A greater proportionate failure of young trees to start first year's growth is also probably due to heat injury in the spring and summer following planting. Tree wrapping seems to be the corrective chiefly indicated.
The difficulties principally mentioned with matured trees are again mostly climatic; drought, sun-scald, early advent of spring followed by late frosts, delayed dormancy in the fall, poor filling in dry seasons, and biennial fruiting.
Insect enemies which damage both trees and nuts are practically the same as in the north only there are more of them. Rodent damage and squirrel theft seem less troublesome there owing, perhaps, to protective measures and to the well developed hunting instinct among southern farm boys.
A larger proportion of growers than are reported in the north sell nuts commercially, with pecans, walnuts, and chestnuts listed as the most profitable species. The practice is still limited as an important source of income, but a much greater proportion of planters look confidently forward toward profitable operations in the future.
Black Walnuts. It is evident that in some of the warmer parts of the United States, California, for instance, the word "hardiness" takes on a certain connotation that we should understand better in the north. Its meaning there is "resistance to delayed dormancy", as one California report states it. As a matter of fact, it might be advisable for us all everywhere to think of hardiness in these terms. Delayed dormancy is hazardous in any tree, whether natural to it or induced artificially by late summer or early fall cultivation and fertilizing, and whether the tree is located in the north or in the south. When a tree goes into the winter with sappy wood, it is injured, and we say it is not hardy.