T. P. Littlepage, Washington, D. C.
The purpose of the Northern Nut Growers Association is to stimulate the
production of nuts in the North. We distinguish the North from the South
in this regard not because we feel any less interest in the nut industry
in the South. The man who once becomes a nut enthusiast is no respecter
of Mason's and Dixon's Line or any other line that separates him from an
interesting nut tree or from a section in which nuts may be successfully
grown. His local interest, however, will naturally be around his own
dooryard and neighborhood. So we speak of northern nut culture and
northern nut trees because we live in the North and because this is the
section of the United States that needs at the present time the most
intelligent direction. The South has been forging ahead for a number of
years in this field. In fact, pecan culture promises to become second
only to the cotton industry in many sections of that country and
interest in its possibilities has attracted to it many conscientious,
able and prominent horticulturists who are today engaged in pecan
growing in the South and who are doing much to put the pecan industry on
an honest and intelligent basis. These men have become specialists in
the pecan industry and they know more about it than we do in the North.
Consequently they do not need our assistance, even if we were able to
give it, and, therefore, without any fear of our being criticised for
using the adjective "northern" we can limit our investigations and
discussions to nut culture in the northern part of the United States
with a full knowledge that our southern brethren can take care of
themselves, and, in addition, can render us much valuable assistance
which assistance we most cheerfully invite.
At this point, however, in connection with the use of the terms
"northern" and "southern," it may be relevant to make a few observations
as to the possibilities in either section. While it is true that the
South has a long start of the North in pecan culture, yet the North
affords an opportunity for the cultivation of nuts which is not possible
in the South. The South is today the home of the delicious varieties of
pecan which are a delight to the consumer and a source of fascination
and profit to the intelligent producer, but it must be remembered that
the northern pecan belt has many excellent varieties that are "good
enough." In addition to this, the North is the home of the black walnut,
the fine shagbark hickory, the butternut, the chestnut, the hazel-nut,
and the chinkapin, and is also adapted to the hardy varieties of the
English and Japanese walnuts. All of the nuts just named certainly offer
an ample field for our interest and enthusiasm, and, in addition to the
keen delight which comes from the successful growing of these trees,
there is a possibility of profit which I do not think is excelled in any
horticultural undertaking today.
First then, what word of advice or instruction can the Northern Nut
Growers Association bring to the prospective nut grower which will be of
help? For, after all, the success or failure of this association depends
largely upon its ability to help the grower or prospective grower.
Before we undertake to give suggestions about the development and
culture of nut orchards or to make prophecies as to possibilities, let
us stop and take stock for a moment of the present status of the nut
industry in the North and consider what we have to build upon and what
materials we have with which to work. Mistakes have been made in the
past by the prospective nut growers because they did not stop to
consider the possibilities of the nuts that were native in their own
locality, but looked abroad for something else. This is characteristic
of many people. "Distant fields look green," and, of all the imported
nut trees, none except the English walnut have been of any success here
whatever, while, in one instance at least, their importation has
resulted in introducing into this country the fatal chestnut blight,
which probably came in on uninspected stock from Japan. We have better
native chestnuts in this country than any foreign chestnut and the
blunder of trying to get something different is costing the country
millions of dollars through the scourge of the chestnut blight, which
threatens to wipe out the industry. It reminds me of the epitaph on the
tombstone which read: "I was well and wanted to be better, took medicine
and here I am." Therefore, let us consider what nuts we have worth
while.
The Pecan
First, we have the northern pecan which is native in certain portions of
a belt approximately 150 miles wide, with Evansville, Indiana, on the
38th parallel, as the center. I do not mean to say that the pecan will
succeed in all portions of the northern half of this belt or that it may
not succeed in many sections farther north. The question of climate, as
modified by proximity to oceans and large bodies of water or as made
more rigid by absence of these protections, may decrease or increase the
latitude at which the pecan can be successfully grown. The orange, for
instance, is one of the tenderest fruits and yet, on the western coast,
orange groves are flourishing at the same latitude as Philadelphia,
which is nearly on the 40th parallel, although it is unnecessary to say
that an orange grove would not survive within four or five hundred miles
of the 40th parallel any place else except on the favored western coast.
The southern varieties of pecans will not flourish in the north and we
do not know whether the northern varieties will flourish in the South.
The pecan is a hickory and the northern trees are very hardy and
thrifty. Many varieties have been discovered the last few years which
are thought to be worthy of propagating. Among them are the "Indiana"
and "Busseron," from near Oaktown, Knox County, Indiana; the "Niblack,"
from Vincennes, Knox County, Indiana; the "Warrick," "Green River,"
"Major," "Kentucky," and "Posey," all from the Evansville section; the
"Norton" from Clarksville, Missouri, and several other varieties.
English Walnut
The next most important nut, and probably competing very closely with
the pecan for popular favor, is the English walnut, which is perhaps
the only nut that has been successfully imported for growing. Since the
earliest Colonial days, seedling nuts have been brought from France,
Germany and other parts of Europe and have been planted up and down the
Atlantic Coast. Most of the trees from these plantings have not been
able to permanently withstand climatic conditions, but, scattered here
and there throughout the North and East, are individual trees of
apparent hardiness which bear nuts in size and quality comparing
favorably with the English walnuts we see on the market. Among the
various hardy varieties of the English walnut are the "Rush" and "Nebo,"
from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, introduced by Mr. J. G. Rush, the
pioneer propagator in the Eastern States. Another is the "Hall" from the
shores of Lake Erie, the "Pomeroy" from Lockport, N. Y., a short
distance from Niagara Falls; the "Rumford" from Wilmington, Del.; the
"Ridgway" from Lumberton, N. J.; the "Holden" from Hilton, N. Y.; the
"Boston" from Massachusetts; the "Potomac," "Barnes" and "Weaver" from
Washington, D. C.; and a number of other varieties. The location of the
parent trees just named will give some idea of the probable hardiness of
these varieties.
Shagbark Hickory
The thin-shelled shagbark hickory is a nut that is coming more and more
into favor and is well worthy of propagation. The first shagbark
recognized as a distinct variety was the "Hales," located and named by
Henry Hales of Ridgwood, N. J., about 1874. This is a very large,
attractive, thin-shelled nut, but has been somewhat superseded by other
and superior shagbarks. Dr. Robert T. Morris of New York has been making
a systematic search for several years for trees bearing shagbarks of
high quality and merit, and has been very successful in bringing a
number of such nuts to public attention, including the "Taylor" and
"Cook." The "Swaim" from South Bend, Ind., is an excellent shagbark; the
"Weiker," from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; the "Kirtland," from New
England; the "Rice," from Illinois; and another very superior and fine
shagbark from northern Kentucky which was brought to public attention by
R. L. McCoy of Lake, Ind.
Black Walnuts
Throughout the whole north are tens of thousands of seedling black
walnuts, many of which are of excellent quality, but, so far as is
known, there are but two recognized varieties, the "Thomas," introduced
during the eighties and propagated to a limited extent, and another from
Lamont, Mich.
Butternut
The butternut is also quite common in much of the same territory as is
the black walnut and even in regions farther north, but, so far as I
have knowledge, not a single variety has been named.
Japanese Walnuts
Seedlings of two species of Japanese walnuts are quite common along the
Atlantic Coast and as far inland as the Mississippi River. They are also
grown on the Pacific Coast to some extent, but apparently no varieties
have been recognized.
Another nut which is confused with the Japanese walnut is botanically
known as Juglans Mandshurica. In character of growth the tree quite
resembles the Japanese species, but the nut resembles more our American
butternut and sometimes they are confused. A short time ago a gentleman
in New Jersey who had planted some nuts of the Japanese varieties later
cut down the mature trees because he thought they were American
butternuts.
Hazel-nuts
It is never safe to use the term "hazel" without explaining that it
correctly applies also to the species brought from Europe and more
commonly called filberts. According to the late Mr. Fuller, the Germans
discriminated between hazels and filberts entirely by the shape of the
husk. A nut having a husk which extended and came together beyond the
end of the nut was called filbert, meaning beard. Those having shorter
and more open husks, so that the nut protruded, were called hazels after
the German word "hassel,"—hood, in English. It will readily be seen
that once the nuts were separated from the husks, it would be impossible
by their classification to determine whether they were hazels or
filberts. The Americans generally accept the use of the term hazel to
apply to both the American and European species.
In the early history of our country extensive and persistent efforts
were made to introduce the European hazels, and no wonder, for of all
nut trees this species seems to yield most readily to garden culture.
They are readily capable of adapting themselves to most any kind of soil
and even to rocky ledges which would be impossible to cultivate. They
attain their greatest perfection in good soil and, under proper
cultivation, the trees come into bearing early and the nuts mature early
in the fall, well in advance of other species. The hazel, however, like
the chestnut has met with a fatal disease. It is a blight which seems to
exist everywhere except on the native species, which are so far immune
as to show little or none of its effects. The American hazels, however,
act as host plants to the blight, which thus quickly spreads, with fatal
results, to the European species. Of all the plantings which have been
made during the past one hundred and fifty years, it is safe to say that
there are less than half a dozen hazel orchards in the eastern states
which have not succumbed. It seems quite probable that a golden
opportunity is awaiting someone who is willing to go through the forests
of our eastern states, especially those in lower New England, in search
of individual hazels from which to propagate new varieties. Among the
heavy bearing shrubs, which exist in the section referred to, it is
certain that many hazels could be found well worth propagating.
Turning now from this brief history of northern nut trees, let us
consider the future of the industry as viewed in the light of sound
theory and actual observation. It is unnecessary to present any argument
why nut trees should be planted. Nuts afford the highest grade food
known to science. They are wholesome, healthful, strengthening,—in
fact, without a single objectionable feature so far as I know as an
article of food and, when one considers that food is the basis of human
existence, no further argument is necessary to warrant interest in one
of the best foods known.
Then how shall we advise the prospective grower of a nut orchard? First,
let him determine what kinds of nuts thrive in his vicinity. The
prospective grower in the latitude of Evansville can indulge himself to
his heart's content, for he can grow successfully the pecan, English
walnut, black walnut, butternut, hazel and, up to date, the chestnut.
But, success in growing any of these trees depends upon proper
information, proper varieties, proper soil and proper care. Suppose a
man, in the Evansville latitude, for instance, desires a pecan orchard.
What should he do? His quickest way, if he has wild seedling pecan trees
growing on his farm, would be to have the wild trees top-worked to
well-known varieties. If he has no seedling trees, then his next best
plan is to purchase budded trees of good varieties from some honest
nurseryman, set them not less than sixty feet apart and cultivate and
care for them. Will they grow around fence corners and creek banks? Yes,
if you have plenty of time to wait. They will not, however, be in a
hurry, and it may be your grandchildren who will gather the nuts. But, a
cultivated orchard of budded pecan trees of the right varieties ought to
come into commercial bearing as soon as does an apple orchard. Mr. W. C.
Reed of Vincennes reports Busserons that were budded fourteen months
ago setting as high as sixteen nuts this year. That is, the second
summer after they were budded. If the trees are of the right varieties,
well cultivated, in good soil, and if you care enough for them to throw
some fertilizer around them, they will please you by their growth and
soon become very profitable.
Now suppose one wants an orchard of English walnuts. Almost identically
the same instructions hold true. If you have wild black walnut seedlings
on your farm, by all means have them top-worked to fine varieties of
English walnut, for the black walnut is the best root for the English
walnut. If you have no seedling trees, go to some reputable nurseryman
and buy known varieties of hardy English walnuts budded on hardy black
walnut stocks. Set them not less than fifty feet apart and cultivate and
care for them. Mr. Rush reports one of his budded Rush trees four years
old bearing fifty-seven walnuts this year. I saw a Rush in Washington
City the other day, two years old, carrying about a dozen walnuts; also
a Hall, of the same age, carrying about the same number. Both trees were
thrifty and not much over waist high, and every terminal twig had from
one to two nuts on it.
If you have wild hickory trees growing on your farm, have them
top-worked by the slip-bark or budding method to fine varieties of
shagbarks. In the absence of wild hickories, I believe the future will
prove that the next best method of starting an orchard of budded
shagbark hickories is to buy them budded on hardy northern pecan stocks.
The hickory is not the best stock for the pecan because it is of slower
growth, and for the same reason the pecan ought to be the better stock
for the hickory. But the hickory does not grow as rapidly as does the
English walnut or the pecan and requires more patience.
The hazels are going to afford a great field for the nut grower, as they
are native to a wide territory embracing the Middle West, the North and
the East, and ought to be profitable. A few years ago I found a very
fine large hazel growing on my farm in Warrick County, Indiana. I dug up
some of the roots of this bush and planted them in my garden at
Boonville, and in three years they were bearing fine clusters of hazels
larger than those borne by the parent bush. I think farmers would find
it profitable to set out hedges of native hazel bushes around their
fields and fences and on hillsides.
Butternuts, black walnuts and beechnuts also offer a fertile field for
experiment. Any varieties of butternut or black walnut can be
propagated by budding or top-grafting them on seedling stocks.
I should like to suggest that every farmer in the nut growing belt set
aside at least ten acres of land for a nut orchard. It will give him a
new interest in life and afford him more pleasure and relief from the
ordinary monotony of farm work, I believe, than any other line of work
he can pursue. If Ponce de Leon had planted a nut orchard in this
country instead of wasting his time searching for the fountain of
perpetual youth he could have spent his old days in interesting,
profitable and fascinating work instead of in despair and
disappointment.
But some of the practical questions asked are, "What is the cost of a
nut orchard?" and, "How soon will it bear?" and "What will it be worth
when it does bear?" No man can answer these questions with any degree of
certainty, for everything that man attempts has its drawbacks and
disadvantages. First-class budded nut trees cost from one to two dollars
apiece. The balance of the cost depends largely upon the intelligence
and efficiency of the labor applied in setting and cultivating. When
will they bear? That depends altogether upon who owns them. If properly
cared for they will begin setting some nuts in a few years and will
increase the crop as the years go by. A pecan tree ought to bear
successfully for fifty years—possibly longer, and ought to be bearing
nicely in eight years if properly cared for. But, success depends upon
the care and intelligence with which the original selection of trees and
soil is made, and upon proper cultivation. I have set an orchard of
northern varieties of pecans budded from the parent trees in the
Evansville section on my farm in Maryland this spring. The land cost me
sixty dollars per acre. When they are ten years old they ought to be
worth at least five hundred dollars per acre. I do not know how much
more this grove of nut trees will be worth in ten years, but I would not
option them at the present time for that price. I have about the same
confidence in the English walnut.
I have always been conservative on these matters and always expect to be
because in conservatism lies safety. These figures I have given you are
merely my personal opinion. I have seen pecan groves ten and fifteen
years old for which I would not have given any more than the land was
worth on which they were growing. If any one has a notion that he can
make money in nut culture, without intelligent exertion, he had better
go into some other line of business in which there are men having a fair
degree of success with unintelligent effort. I know of no nut grove in
the whole United States that is succeeding without intelligent
application, and on the other hand I do not know of a single grove which
with intelligent application is not succeeding. I am a
"conservative-optimist." I have been talking nut culture for a number of
years and expect to see every hope and estimate which I have expressed
fulfilled, and after all has been said and considered my final advice is
to Plant Nut Trees.
The President: The chair invites a very active discussion of this paper.
Professor Smith: It would be unkind to criticize so very instructive an
address but there is one thing laid down in that paper I wish to speak
about. I believe we were told we must cultivate our nut trees. I believe
the fact is that in the greater portion of the United States, we can
grow trees, even nut trees, without cultivation. If anybody doesn't
believe that, go to Washington by the Chesapeake Railroad and you will
see thousands of walnut trees along the way. I believe the human race
can grow trees on a hillside without cultivation, and I want to suggest
to persons putting out nut trees to put out a few in places where they
don't have to be plowed, and see if they don't get good results.
Cultivation is not a fundamental element of agriculture or plant life,
but is the quick way to get results.
In many places in Ohio the state experimental work in horticulture,
especially that carried on by F. H. Ballou, has done some wonderful
things in waking up apple orchards that had not grown a quarter of an
inch in years. Merely giving them food has caused them to wake up and
bear. I have seen them, and know. The books say that while apples may
grow without cultivation, peach trees must be cultivated in order to
bear. I have peach trees that are three years old in a rocky piece of
ground. I can't plow it but I have fed some of the peach trees and a few
I did not, that is not much, and the ones that were fed as they should
be are much the biggest and are bearing well. My point is this, keep the
grass well scraped away to prevent trunk injury, and feed even a peach
tree and it will do well. I think the same is true of the nut tree.
Whether a tree that is set out, liberally fed, and the grass kept away
will do as well without cultivation, is a subject worthy of your
consideration and experiment.
The President: The chair especially desires to call attention to Dr.
Smith's remarks because he has made a very careful study of this
question and his suggestions are worthy of very great consideration. I
have talked these things over with him a great deal and I commend his
remarks especially to the Association for discussion.
Dr. Morris: In connection with the matter of cultivation I would also
like to have Mr. Reed discuss that. I want to say, however, that, in
using fertilizers, you will often very easily overdo the matter.
Sometimes in my experience professionally, I give a patient medicine
enough to last a week, with directions that a teaspoonful be taken twice
a day, and the patient may believe if she takes the entire bottle at one
dose she will be well in an hour, and consequently suffer from an
overdose. That same idea is sometimes carried out in the fertilization
of trees by horticulturists. You don't intend to do it but sometimes you
can kill with kindness and be too good in feeding your trees if you
don't understand how much fertilization the tree needs. That is the
idea, you have got to give your trees the ratio that they need. If you
give them too much pie or pudding, your trees will have indigestion and
will not thrive and may die. I have lost a great many good trees, and a
great many nut trees, and have checked the growth of a great many by not
realizing this. I wish Mr. Reed would speak to us about it.
Mr. Potter: I want to state some experience I have had and when Mr. Reed
talks, I wish he would give me some information. I set out some pecan
trees on my lawn in the front yard, and of course there is not much
cultivation there except around the trees. It is like most other lawns
in southern Illinois, mostly clay and what other soil we put on top. Now
the clay is very hard and in setting the trees I had my man dig a hole
three feet deep and two feet across and in setting the trees I packed
good dirt around them. The question is how should I feed those trees? I
have put barn manure around them and they are now growing and doing very
nicely, I want to know if I have pursued the right course.
Mr. McCoy: I believe this question of growing trees in fence corners and
on hillsides is not so large a question. The main thing is to give them
plenty of water. There is very little land in the Mississippi valley
that won't grow pecan trees or most any other kind, if you will give
them sufficient mulch and plenty of water, because they take their food
in the form of soup. Unless they have water, they won't grow. I believe
the best cultivation you can give a tree of any kind is a good mulch of
straw and manure. You that have had experience in this part of the
country know that is the best way to cultivate trees.
I grew a peach orchard once in one year, but I have quit that, I have
learned better. It is simply a question of water and plant food. If you
will mulch any kind of a tree, nut tree or any kind, with ten or fifteen
inches of straw and stable manure, you will have a steady growth from
early spring until late in the fall, and it will make a strong tree.
Professor Smith: While we are waiting for Mr. Reed I want to take up Mr.
McCoy's soup suggestion. Water doesn't make good soup without something
in it. Experiments show that you can mulch ground in some places and not
wake up the tree, but fertilizer will wake it up the first year.
Mr. Potter: What kind of fertilizer did you use?
Professor Smith: One must experiment to see what his land is short on.
Sometimes you can fertilize your trees without any result. Sometimes
potash will not do any good and sometimes it will. You will have to see
what your ground needs. For young apple trees I found in my particular
situation that nitrate of soda is all I want. I have what is called a
Porter's clay soil on the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I use that
and then my trees get busy and grow. They make rapid growth even the
first season with a handful of nitrate and for my three year old trees
half a pound is enough. That is what my soil seems to need and we must
use what the soil is short on. That is my interpretation of my situation
and it works.
The President: Who can tell us whether nitrate of soda is good for nut
trees? Can you, Mr. Simpson?
Mr. Simpson: In the South, we do not think so.
The President: The reason I asked, is that I have been studying that. I
wrote Mr. Potter a letter suggesting that he use some on his young nut
trees to see what it would do, and later I found out that all through
the South it was not regarded as desirable. It seems they claim it
starts pecan trees into an active growth but when they stop they make a
very sudden stop and don't start growing any more. I want to get this in
the record right here. You understand that is the general belief
throughout the South, do you not?
Mr. Simpson: Yes sir, it is not considered good.
The President: Dr. Smith has made a very careful study of fruit trees
and knows its effect on them from experiments, but it is well perhaps to
consider fruit and nut trees separately.
Professor Smith: I should suggest to anybody who is thinking of working
with trees, to get some seedling pecans and plant them and then
fertilize some of them and others not, in the same kind of soil. In
that way he can get his own fertilizer conclusions at a small expense
and then he will know what his own soil needs.
Mr. McCoy: We fertilized seedling pecans in a clay soil and we decided
the trees we did not fertilize got along better than the ones we did. Of
course that ground is better where the trees are than on the average
farm. We used nitrate of soda and potash but we decided the ones we
didn't fertilize did the best.
Mr. Potter: I put two pounds of nitrate of soda around each tree and the
English walnuts I used it on budded out very shortly after using it, but
along about June they died. The pecan trees we used it around grew
fairly well, but some of them, one in particular, appeared to remain
dormant, almost, until about two months ago when it commenced growing
and is now growing very rapidly. So you see I don't know where I am at.
The President: In writing you I did not understand the size of the tree.
On some trees I have been using a tablespoonful, about that, and I was
afraid I got too much.
Mr. Potter: Evidently I got too much.
The President: Evidently we got mixed up on the quantity. I know I never
used more than two tablespoonfuls at any time and I should imagine two
pounds would be a big overdose. I remember talking to Dr. Smith about
that time about some old apple trees around which you can use five or
six pounds of nitrate of soda and I suppose that is the way we got mixed
up. I must have had that in mind as I did not intend to advise that
amount for young nut trees.
Mr. Pomeroy: How long a season should the tree keep growing? From early
spring to late in the fall? My experience is they will stop about the
first of August, and let the wood ripen up and harden for the cold
weather. Some might keep the trees growing longer, but you will hurt the
trees I think.
The President: We have not heard from Mr. Reed yet.
Mr. C. A. Reed: I am glad the discussion has proceeded as it has since
it has given me time to reconnoitre. I hardly know what to say on this
subject that Professor Smith has brought up. I guess he knows what he is
talking about so far as his experiments have taught him. The department
does not like to discourage a good thing nor to encourage a thing that
is too risky. There is one thing quite sure and that is that so long as
nut trees are selling for from one dollar to two dollars apiece, very
few people are going to buy them and plant many of them on these
hillsides and experiment with them. People cannot afford to do that. We
have found, taking the country over, that nut trees thrive best when
they are given treatment; that is they must be given cultivation and
fertilization; be given some degree of attention the same as an apple or
peach orchard. Colonel Sober, however, will show you quite a different
thing. He will show you chestnut trees that are not cultivated at all,
so there is a staggering blow to my argument, and yet Colonel Sober gets
something like three and a half bushels to the tree. You don't fertilize
those trees, do you, Colonel Sober?
Colonel Sober: No sir, not at all. Haven't yet.
Mr. Reed: So there is an argument that silences me and still it is true
that we can't safely plant hickories and pecans without some degree of
cultivation. I don't think Professor Smith has planted any on these
hills.
Still we all agree with Professor Smith in a way. Something ought to be
done to the surface to prevent the land from washing, and there is no
better way of doing that than by planting trees. Then the roots will
prevent washing and they can take care of themselves better than a
surface crop. Especially is this true on the hillsides, so there is a
good deal in Professor Smith's argument. And yet there is the danger
that those trees will be infected with disease and insects. On plants
and trees that are attended to and cultivated we find those pests will
be kept in check. So there are two sides to that argument.
Professor Smith: The point I raised was this, that it is possible in
some places to attain by fertilization the advantage that comes by
cultivation in other places. Great things have been done without
fertilization. There are chestnut orchards in Corsica of grafted trees,
ranging from the size of my wrist to eighteen to twenty feet in
circumference. They have not been fertilized in centuries, and they
yield enough to support the entire population.
The President: We would like to hear from Col. Van Duzee, and I want to
say that, as President of the National Nut Growers Association, he is
well acquainted with these things. I commend him to you and promise that
whatever he may have to say to you is worthy of your very careful
consideration. I have the honor to belong to the association of which he
is the president, and know it is seldom we have an opportunity to hear
men like him.
Col. Van Duzee: Gentlemen, I am going to side step this argument for I
do not think it worth while taking up the time. We are here for other
purposes. Personal experiences are not the general rule because each
one's experience differs from that of others. We might all tell our
personal experiences and after we were all through we would not have
accomplished anything. I want to take you back to the point from which
we started this, in order to know what we are talking about. To
illustrate what I want to say to you, we can take the root pasture of a
tree and analyze it in every possible way so as to bring to bear upon it
the best judgment we have from all sources. The tree grown upon a
hillside has a root pasture which is entirely different in many ways
from the root pasture in the river bottoms. If we have a tree growing on
a hillside in a soil that easily transmits moisture and it gives that
tree constantly a stream of pure water going through its root system,
and there happens to be enough fertility in that vicinity, that moisture
is impregnated with plant food, and the tree will get all it wants. You
can't speak in the same breath of the tree growing in the river bottoms
whose entire root pasture is entirely different. The root pasture may
become contaminated by various things which may cause, so to speak,
ptomaine poison. Therefore I say that every locality, every soil, every
climatic condition, every variety of tree must be taken as individual.
What would be good for an apple orchard in Virginia might be fatal to an
apple orchard immediately south of Lake Brie in Ohio. The use of
commercial fertilizer that would be good in one locality would be bad in
another. Therefore I disapprove of this kind of a discussion, because we
are not speaking to a definite point. I want to bring your minds to this
point, that every individual tree and its locality, and the man that is
responsible for its welfare, must be analyzed before you can speak
intelligently about what must be done.
I am going to tell you the same story I told the societies at Pharoa,
Alabama. They wanted me to talk on this subject and I said, "You remind
me of a backwoods character I have come in contact with in the woods of
Florida who is ill and doesn't know what is the matter with him. He
knows he needs medicine and he goes down to the general store and buys a
bottle of patent medicine recommended by the groceryman and he takes it
and maybe it helps him and maybe it don't, but if he don't get better he
goes and gets advice from some other man like the grocer." I said, "That
is the way you are demonstrating fertilizer." The first thing I would
advise would be this: to analyze the individual pasture of the
individual tree and take everything that enters into the history of that
tree and everything that bears upon it. All the accumulated wisdom of
others won't help us very much. We have to use common horse sense. We
can't talk about these things generally. In poor soil and under bad
conditions the pecan tree will do nothing. There are trees I know
twenty-six or twenty-seven years old that are not as large as my wrist,
that have never borne a nut and never will. I can also show you trees in
that immediate vicinity, planted at the same time from the same nuts
with favorable conditions, that are seventy or eighty feet high and
bearing good crops of nuts. Those nuts came out of the same bag the same
day, and were planted by the same man in the same locality, and that
proves, as I have said before, that you cannot discuss things of this
kind in general terms and it is a waste of the time of the association
to do so. I would be glad to answer definite questions as to definite
points.
The President. The next will be a talk by Dr. R. T. Morris of New York.
Dr. Morris: Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Association: My subject
relates to personal experiences with hybridization work. This is work
which is to be done more and more by various members of our association,
and we are thus to create new species of trees. Nature's whole endeavor
is to preserve the mean type among races of organisms. There are mutants
among all trees, among the hickories and walnuts, as well as among the
peaches and pears. In fact all species undergo mutation. We select the
most desirable mutants and we try to fix a given type by grafting and
propagating. Seedlings will go back toward the mean type. The mean type
hickory, walnut or chestnut is the type that nature wishes to preserve,
but these are not best for man's purposes. What is best in nature's plan
is not always best in man's plan. We have got to dynamite nature. We
have got to put a charge of dynamite under nature's seat and blow her
up, in order to get what we want for our own purposes. How do we do it?
How do we break up the mean type of a variety or species? By crossing
the flowers and bringing together the parents we wish to unite in the
hope of growing new forms, among which will be some that are
particularly desirable for our purposes.
Now in doing this work, I have had to get by experience a number of
points which will be of value to members of this association. First, in
regard to collecting pollen. Sometimes species, which we wish to cross,
flower at widely different times. They bloom perhaps two or three or
four or even six weeks apart, and it is a question how long we can keep
the pollen viable. What can we do about it? There are two good ways.
First, get your branches of male flowers before they are open, put them
in cold storage, or in an ice house, or in a dark room, and keep them
anywhere from one to six weeks dormant. When you want to use them, and
your trees of the pistillate flowers are ready, take the branches of
staminate flowers out of the ice house and put them in jars of water in
a warm room in the sunshine. They will blossom and make good pollen
shortly. Another way is through correspondents living at a distance.
These correspondents will send you pollen from a species which blossoms
later further north or earlier further south, at the time which you wish
for your pistillate flowers. For instance, in crossing chinkapins with
oaks, the chinkapins will blossom about the 12th of June in Connecticut
but most of the oaks are through blossoming by the 12th of May. There we
have a month's difference. How can I use oak pollen upon my chinkapin
trees? I do this by sending away up to the northern limits of the growth
of the oak tree, up in Canada. The red oak tree blossoms there in June,
the same species that blossoms with me early in May. Pecan pollen that I
wish to use upon shagbarks and walnuts I get from Texas. Now how are we
to keep pollen when we have collected it, if we are not ready to use it
immediately? I have had pollen sent to me from a distance in tightly
corked bottles. It was probably ruined at the end of three or four days,
because it could not breathe. Every grain of pollen has to breathe just
as surely as a red squirrel in the top of a tree has to breathe. The
pollen grain is a living organism, and if it is sent in a closely corked
bottle it smothers and dies. You must have it sent in paper or wooden
boxes in order to have it in good condition when it arrives, and it must
be kept in a cool place, not too dry and not too damp. If it is kept in
a place that is too damp, various fungi appear, and begin to attack it
at once. If it is too dry, it loses its water content, and its
protoplasm does not make combination with that of the other flower. So
we must keep our pollen in a cool place, not too dry, not too warm and
not too moist, and where it can breathe. We may put it in cold storage
but not at a temperature below freezing. We may put it into the cold
storage which florists use, and keep it for a long while. Some pollen
will keep, viable for three weeks, under these conditions, possibly
longer. It is important to keep your pollen boxes open at the top. They
must be kept where the wind doesn't blow your pollen from one box to
another. I had not been impressed by that point until this year. I had
eight different kinds of pollen about the farm house, in different
rooms, in order to be sure to keep them far apart. One day on my arrival
from town ready for pollenating a number of trees, I found that a very
neat housekeeper had found it undesirable to keep such boxes scattered
about in so many places. She had put them all neatly together in a
closet on one shelf, and there was none of the pollen that I could use,
because the wind had mixed the kinds all up. I had eight kinds of pollen
across which one kind of wind had blown.
There is one practical point in cross pollenizing flowers that I have
recently learned. Pollen of one variety may not combine with the ovule
of another variety or species but may stimulate the ovule to go on and
develop all alone, without taking to itself the added pollen. That is a
very important point, and possibly a new point. I was deceived, and
reported that I had crosses of certain trees, and that such hybrids were
growing. I knew that the flowers of parent trees had been properly
protected from their own pollen. Now when these young trees are two
years of age, I find they are true to one parent type; so true that they
are evidently not hybrids. They have developed from the pistillate
parent only. In ordinary parthenogenesis the fruit grows without any
pollen influence at all. This forced parthenogenesis which I have
described seems to be a phenomenon with which botanists are unfamiliar.
Until I learn that it has been described and named by others I shall
call it Allergic Parthenogenesis (Allos, ergon). The pistillate flowers
accept absolutely no pollen, but go on and develop because of its
impulse given. In cross pollenizing flowers, I find one point of great
practical consequence. When covering the female flowers with paper bags
to protect them from their own pollen you give protection to a great
number of insects. The insects remain inside these bags and destroy the
leaves and flowers. They are protected there from their enemies,
predatory insects and the birds. When the bags are taken off, perhaps a
week later, for the purpose of adding pollen to pistillate flowers,
insects may have destroyed the leaves and even the flowers.
Consequently, I find it best to sprinkle the leaves with Persian insect
powder and to put some of it in the bags that are to cover the flowers.
Insects can't live in an atmosphere of this insect powder. They sneeze
themselves to death. I have taken the bags from leaves and flowers which
were so badly injured by insects you could distinguish them at a
considerable distance. Those are all the points that I jotted down for
this address today, but no doubt many other points will be brought out
in the subsequent discussion.
Mr. McCoy: I would like to inquire how far it is possible under a
microscopic examination to determine the species of the pollen.
Dr. Morris: It is possible to determine the species but not the variety
so far as I know. It may be possible to determine a variety but I don't
know the extent to which that is possible, from microscopic examination
of the pollen. If we wish to know whether pollen is still good or not we
may in twenty-four or forty-eight hours cause it to "sprout," and in
that way know whether it is viable and good. We may save ourselves a
good deal of trouble by making this examination and determining whether
or not a given lot of pollen is viable before putting it on the flowers.
We can cause it to sprout in a sugar solution.
The Secretary: What is the strength of the sugar solution?
Dr. Morris: That is technical work and must be done by a plant
physiologist. He will do it for us at the State Agricultural College and
telegraph his report.
Mr. Dorr: Is this work you have outlined of sufficient definiteness to
get results? That is the important thing. We farmers sometimes discover
a plan accidentally that will outclass anything we can get in an
agricultural college.
Dr. Morris: That is very important. We are to produce nuts that are
better, and also in greater quantities. The question if hybridizing work
is valuable has been already answered in the case of roses and soft
fruits. Our best types are largely the ones which have been secured by
hybridization and the same will be true of nuts. The subject has not
been so largely taken up as yet with nuts. Very few of us are doing with
nuts what has been done with other fruits.
The President: The chair wishes to say that the members of this
association have a very great and rare opportunity to secure information
on this subject. Dr. Morris has made a very careful study of it.
Dr. Morris: The more study I make, the less I seem to know. Consequently
I shall be very modest in my replies.
Mr. Dorr: I have been working with different things and find so many
things I can't get at the truth. In the last year I have made
experiments in breeding cattle to get colors, and I was agreeably
surprised with my own success. I want to know if you can get similar
results. I can observe the results so readily that I know exactly how I
get them.
Dr. Morris: As a general statement the same thing you get from working
with animals we may expect to get in working with plants. The protoplasm
of plants is now known to act like that of animals, but not quite so
quickly or freely in response to cultural methods. We can breed to size
and breed to quality and character of fruit, and we find we may do with
plants just about what we do with animals, only not quite so quickly,
because animal protoplasm responds more readily.
Mr. W. C. Reed: I would like to ask if in a cross between the Persian
walnut and the shagbark hickory there is a cross pollenization, or is it
an increased vitality given by the pollen? Is there really a cross
there?
Dr. Morris: I made one cross between the Persian walnut and the shagbark
hickory that was evidently a good hybrid. It showed character of both
parents, but I lost that entire lot. I wasn't careful enough in
protecting them. I have another lot of crosses between these two flowers
in which the type often is so definitely shagbark hickory that I doubt
if there is any walnut there at all. Under certain conditions we may get
hybrids, yet miss it at another time, even when working with the same
parents. Somebody has probably made a better study of this point and
recorded better ideas. I think we may safely say that we may expect an
actual cross between some walnuts and hickories.
Mr. McCoy: Would it be possible to cross the English walnut and the
black walnut and produce a nut of superior quality?
Dr. Morris: Yes, it is possible to cross them, but you do not often get
a nut of superior quality. The tendency seems to be to have a nut of
thick shell and of not high quality, but if you make a thousand of those
crosses, out of the thousand you may get a few of just what you want.
Professor Close: I want to ask if you are always careful to apply the
pollen when it is well ripened?
Dr. Morris: Yes, I have always been careful to apply it at just the time
when it was well ripened, and that is of great importance in its bearing
upon Mr. Reed's question. If I have pollen which is quite ripe I may
perhaps catch it upon an ovule, but if it is not ripe I won't got the
cross. I may add it a little too early or too late when the pistillate
flower is unprepared and I won't get a cross. If I get my pollen just at
the right time upon the pistillate flowers I may have a good cross,
between varieties which do not cross readily.
Professor Close: In my experience in breeding apples, formerly I always
waited until the pollen was ripe, and that meant I had to cover the
blossoms with bags and depend on the weather for conditions favorable to
pollenation. But four or five years ago I began pollenating much earlier
and I have had good results.
Dr. Morris: That is a very important point.
Professor Close: By doing that I know it is pollenated. I have been
failing so many years I felt it was a loss of all the first part of the
work.
Dr. Morris: It is a great convenience to be able to pollenate at the
same moment when you emasculate.
A Member: I would like to have you kindly explain to what extent cross
pollenation can be made practical to the ordinary grower.
Dr. Morris: Let's say that in case of the butternut we wish to
experiment with removal of the thick shell, and also to obtain less of
that strong oily flavor; we wish to get rid of those two things. In
order to do that I would first think of the Japanese walnut, juglans
cordiformis, which has a much thinner shell and is less oily and more
bland. Crosses between this Japanese walnut and the butternut we may
fairly expect will sometimes give us a large, thin shelled butternut of
good character. The next question is, who is going to do it? The men
about my place are pretty busy, and this is rather delicate work. It is
going to be a most inspiring field for the young folks and the ladies,
because it is nice, pretty, ladylike work, and beside that its returns
may be large. If your little daughter, ten years of age, knows that she
may get $2,000 for a single cross that she has made, it is stimulating,
because it is not every child ten years of age who can put $2,000 in the
bank, as personal earnings of increment.
Mr. Mosely: I would like to ask just what results you expect from the
cross pollenization of these nuts, and just how far they will differ
from the parent type?
Dr. Morris: You are bound to have continuance of one parent type, but in
crossing with pollen from hybrids you may carry desirable
characteristics through a series of generations and breed for what is
wanted, possibly to the sixth generation or even further with some
species.
Mr. Mosely: Then the type is not fixed until pollenization?
Dr. Morris: By selecting the one showing the dominant characteristics
you wish to preserve, you could breed through several generations and
have an ideal type eventually.
Mr. Doan: I would like to ask how far the buds are developed in cold
storage before the pollen can be used?
Dr. Morris: For instance, take the hazel when its catkins are just
beginning to elongate. It may be put in the ice house and kept there,
for two or three weeks dormant. When we wish to develop those flowers we
put the branches in a jar of water in a warm room and in about three
days the plants are shedding pollen. I got some hazel catkins this
spring that were elongating. It was the latter part of February when we
had one or two warm days and I believed my pistillate hazels were about
ready for pollen. I got those branches from Rochester. We had unexpected
cold weather and storms and my pistillate hazels did not bloom until
more than two weeks later. I kept these undeveloped catkins that I had
received in a cold dark place. When I wanted to use them I put them in a
jar of water and in less than three days they were shedding pollen
freely, at a time when my pistillate flowers were ready for pollen.
Mr. Mosely: I would like to know the object in crossing the oak on the
chinkapin.
Dr. Morris: My idea is to get a chinkapin tree twice as large as an oak,
perhaps. I shall hope to have a chinkapin tree as sturdy as the red oak,
with nuts larger than acorns and of as good quality as the chinkapin
nut. Of course that extravagant possibility only appeals to one with a
speculative nature.
The President: Pursuant to the authority conferred on the President this
morning, the following committees are announced:
On Nomination—Robert T. Morris, Chairman: C. P. Close, J. L. Doan, R.
T. Olcott, C. A. Reed.
Exhibits—Prof. C. P. Close, Chairman; J. P. Wilkinson, E. A. Riehl,
Colonel Sober, W. C Reed.
Resolutions—W. O. Potter, Chairman; H. R. Weber, J. Russell Smith.
The chair also wishes to place an additional member on the membership
committee, in the place of Mr. Corsan, who has not been able to attend
the last two meetings, and will appoint Leon D. Batchellor of Utah.
Committee on Revision of Constitution and Rules—Prof. C. P. Close, Dr.
W. C. Deming.
I will also add to the committee on nomenclature C. A. Reed and R. L.
McCoy.
The President: We have a few minutes before time for adjournment and Mr.
Evans, a dynamite man, will speak to us.
Mr. Evans: Mr. Chairman: The question arises as to what kind of dynamite
to use in the different soils. Most pecan land contains clay and can
best be worked by dynamite. Don't buy ordinary dynamite, because it is
too high an explosive. For several reasons it is not the kind of an
explosive you wish. In some places dynamite can hardly be put on the
market as many people are afraid of it and so the word dynamite has been
eliminated, and we now have what we call Red Cross Farm Powder. It will
work in any part of the country, it is not a high explosive and the
price is lower as the hardware dealers have it direct from the Dupont
companies. By using this Red Cross Farm Powder, less labor is required
and it doesn't cost very much. For labor and all it will cost you about
five cents per hole, and that includes the dynamite caps, fuse and
labor.
Professor Smith: How much do you use?
Mr. Evans: That depends on the soil and also on the depth to which you
want to shoot the hole. Nurserymen have different opinions on that
subject, but in the southern field where I have been working they
usually go from two and a half to three feet deep. They use one-half
stick 20 per cent dynamite, or one quarter of a pound as it weighs two
sticks to the pound. That should make a hole two and a half or three
feet deep. Fuse is cheap and you should use plenty of it. A man has to
be governed always by the kind of soil he is dealing with.
Mr. Pomeroy: In shooting an old apple orchard how deep would you go?
Mr. Evans: Where I have been working from three and a half to four feet,
but as I said before it will depend largely on the soil.
Mr. Pomeroy: How far from the body of the tree?
Mr. Evans: I have never made a study of that.
Mr. Potter: In limestone soil, for instance, built up with clay, how
near the trees would you use the dynamite if you want to loosen up the
soil?
Mr. Evans: What kind of trees?
Mr. Potter: Pecan.
Mr. Evans: About six feet. I think that is close enough.
Mr. Potter: Would you make more than one hole around the tree?
Mr. Evans: Use your own judgment about that.
Mr. Potter: How far out will it loosen or break up the ground?
Mr. Evans: Probably six feet. You can distinguish on the top of the
ground where it takes place.
Mr. Potter: How deep will it be?
Mr. Evans: About a foot deeper than the charge is placed.
The Secretary: With me the most important thing in using dynamite is the
question of headache. I used the 20 per cent at first and it had no
effect. I had heard of its causing headaches and knew some people
couldn't use it but I thought I was immune. Then I began to use 70 or 80
per cent and I got knocked out for twenty-four hours. The more I used it
the more susceptible I became. When I went back to handling the lower
percentages I got the same results, was completely knocked out and had
to go to bed. Sometimes the effect would come on a long time after I
used the dynamite, perhaps hours afterwards, and the headache would
increase, until I was intensely nauseated and had to give up entirely.
Is there anything to prevent that? Is it caused by the fumes after the
explosion?
Mr. Evans: Some say it is from handling the dynamite, others say it is
the fumes after the explosion. Red Cross has ammonia in it and that
ought to help some. Dynamite contains nitro glycerine and if you handle
it bare handed it gets in the pores of the skin and causes rapid heart
action. In dynamiting holes for tree planting you will get the fumes and
you will get a headache. If a man could work with gloves on he could
avoid this to a very great extent. You can't do it easily but if you can
do it without taking off the gloves I don't think it would bother you
much. I neglected to state that dynamite by itself is not dangerous
because it will withstand shock or fire or anything like that. The
danger is in the cap. It contains the most powerful explosive known. If
you handle them carefully, there is absolutely no danger. This year we
are slipping little copper disks into the caps with a pin hole for the
fire to strike through.
Mr. Hargis: I have difficulty in making the shots. Should you put your
cap at the bottom or the top of the stick?
Mr. Evans: I should advise the top. A misfire is always expensive. If
you think it is necessary put in a cap in the bottom and one in the top.
Mr. Pomeroy: If you have a misfire and the men don't like to monkey
around it, and neither do you, just step off a few inches and stick in
another one and let her go. Will that fix the stick that didn't go off?
Mr. Evans: That is the safest way.
Mr. Hargis: In tamping say you have a hole in a rock four feet. I have
had men tell me to pour the hole full of water. Is that right?
Mr. Evans: That is the best method known.
In tree planting you will always have to use your own judgment. Go down
four or five or six feet to learn the character of the soil, tamp the
cartridge well and as fuse is not expensive, always use plenty of it.
The President: Any further discussion of this, or any further questions
on the use of dynamite?
Mr. Doan: Mr. President, I would like to mention a method I found
helpful. That is to make two holes in the cartridge, one diagonally
down from one side, thrusting the fuse bearing the cap through that, and
then making a hole diagonally in the other side and thrusting the cap in
it.
Mr. Evans: We do not advocate using that method because dynamite will
become ignited from the fuse and will burn. To be frank with you that is
the method we use, but the company does not approve of it and we should
not use it. You are liable to have a misfire. In warm weather there is
no danger but in cold weather don't use it. The best method is to bore
right in at an angle of forty-five degrees.
Mr. Potter: Do you advise us to use dynamite?
Mr. Evans: Yes, we have men making a business of it.
Mr. Potter: To be frank with you I don't like to use it.
Mr. Evans: Dynamite is not dangerous. It is the caps, though they look
safe. It is that white stuff in the dynamite cap. There is where the
danger is.
The President: We will stand adjourned until 1 o'clock.
The President: I will ask W. C. Reed to state something of his program
for Saturday so the members may know about it.
W. C. Reed: Our plans for Saturday morning are that we are leaving
Evansville at 7:30, arriving in Vincennes at 9:30; several automobiles
will be in waiting there to take all the party out to the nurseries and
get back to the station for the 2 o'clock train going north to Oaktown,
where there will be automobiles in waiting to take us out to see the
original Busseron and Indiana trees, coming back to Oaktown in time for
the 6:40 train south, arriving in Vincennes at 7:07, or the train north
out of Oaktown to Terre Haute, to connect for Pittsburgh over the
Pennsylvania Lines or Big Four if anyone wants to go that way. We would
like to have everyone go with us Saturday, if possible, and would also
like to know sometime this afternoon before we adjourn how many are
going, so I can notify them tonight how many automobiles there will be
needed at each point.
The President: That is rather an important visit for the members to make
for two or three reasons. Those of you who haven't had the opportunity
of seeing the pecan propagated in Mr. McCoy's nursery will get a chance
to see Mr. Reed's nursery; and you will get to see the parent trees of
two good northern Varieties. We know very much depends on the location
of the original parent tree, notwithstanding it is sometimes said it is
the location of the nursery that determines the hardiness. We know that
has nothing to do with it. You cannot, by putting a tree in a nursery
for six months, change its nature. If you take this trip Saturday, you
will have a chance to see the Busseron and the Indiana.
Mr. Reed: We will also visit the Niblack tree if we have time.
The President: I would suggest that all go who can. I want also to urge
all of you to make the trip tomorrow and see the big seedling pecan
trees bearing nuts hanging almost to the ground. You cannot always see
that because usually they are so tall. I also want to call your
attention to the exhibits in the other room. Mr. Wilkinson has a very
fine collection in there. Col. Sober has some very fine exhibits of
chestnuts, both of burrs and nuts, and Mr. W. C. Reed has a very fine
collection and possibly there are many others I should mention. You
ought to examine all of them, because the only way of drawing correct
conclusions about these things comes from careful study, and it cannot
be done hastily. The next on the program this afternoon will be Mr.
McCoy's talk.
Mr. McCoy: I have no set speech to make I thought maybe there were some
things I might say to be a help to some of you; some things that would
have been lots of help to me a year or two ago from some one, because
nut trees are more difficult than any other nursery stock to propagate,
and for another reason it is more difficult in the North than in the
South. Mr. Paul White and Mr. Ford Wilkinson have both worked in the
North and in the South, and after coming back home these boys say that
anybody can propagate pecans in the South, but with us it is different.
We have kept at it, though, and our president has been our good friend
and has always helped us out. There have been three of us incessantly at
the work. Mr. Littlepage would come down home and get us together and
ginger us up, and we would go back and go to work and try again. It has
been one continuous line of failures, but every year we have learned
some things, or at least learned how not to do it. This spring we were
fortunate in having an expert from the South who came to my nursery and
stayed there until midsummer, and we saw our own work compared with his.
We all had great respect for him and he is able, too. I don't think he
had much respect for us when he got here but he had a whole lot when he
went away for he made a miserable failure like the rest of us. Mr.
Jones, you know, is an authority on grafting. He is the man that
introduced it to the nut world, at least in the East. I think it had
been tried in California before. We have tried his methods and
everything else that government experts or any other expert told us
about, and we have read all the magazines that were published from the
South to the North. Everything seemed to be a failure and finally I got
disgusted and said "We will do it to suit ourselves." After we had tried
all the hard ways in Christendom I think we have at last found an easy
way to do it. Like everything else it is easy when you know how. I
believe it is a fact—and I am saying nothing but what I believe—I
don't believe you will ever successfully graft pecan trees in the North,
unless you equalize your sap flow by pruning your roots. I tried it and
failed. It is possible you may be able to side graft under most
favorable conditions. You may make a side graft take if you leave the
top on to take care of the extra sap flow. You take off the top of a
pecan tree, or any other nut tree in this country, and you ruin your
root system because your sap comes with such vengeance—and it comes!
One day there is no show of sap and the next day it comes with
vengeance. Differences in the soil, of course, makes some difference. At
Mr. Littlepage's place, Paul had the sap a week before I did and Mr.
Wilkinson had it four days before. A great many of our top works are
going to the bad because we ruined the root system when we cut the tree.
And I want to say it again, I don't believe we can make a success of it
in the North. You may do it in Oregon where you have a distributed sap
flow. The Oregon fellows say you can't bud, because they don't know how.
They say the only way you can produce trees is to graft. That may be
true out there but you can't graft in Indiana, I know, especially on my
place. Of course the soil of each particular farm has something to do
with it. To illustrate my point, the first year I was in the state of
Wisconsin, on the 20th of June, I was out in the country and saw a man
setting tobacco. I knew him and I said, "Won't that tobacco get frost
bit?" and he said, "I reckon not. It might but it never did." I thought
it would, but I went that way in two weeks again and I changed my mind.
I had been used to seeing tobacco growing in the Ohio valley where it
does its growing in the latter part of the season. In the South the sap
flow is much better distributed than it is in the North.
Now, then, I have brought a board along with these young trees stuck in
it, because I thought some of the members would like to see a
demonstration. The tools I have here are not adequate, hardly, for the
job. For a tree that size we take a saw to it.
(Here Mr. McCoy makes a demonstration of cleft grafting.)
Mr. Potter: Would you have a scion as long as that in actual work?
Mr. McCoy: Many of them are, but it would be better smaller, probably.
That is a matter I don't think there is much to, whether the scion has
one bud or ten. I think three is perhaps about right.
Mr. Potter: They come together right there?
Mr. McCoy: Exactly on the front side. Now you understand this grafting
is done when the sap is flowing, or about the time the sap flow begins.
Usually at our latitude here you will commence grafting anywhere from
the 6th of April to about that time in May. Of course when you are
cutting trees at that time you have got an immense flow of sap. Mr.
Jones tried this method without drainage, that is the way they do out in
Louisiana, but he only got ten per cent to stick, so we had to work out
a drainage for ourselves. Take a piece of heavy wrapping paper, rather
good quality such as you can get at any paper store, and put it right
over your graft, and a little bit below the cut on your stock. Then
simply take a piece of raffia and wrap. Then make the ordinary tie that
anyone knows how to make with the cotton or twine, or sometimes with the
raffia, and you have the drainage of this paper. The tie, of course, is
simply to re-enforce the strain on the graft and hold it. Then you apply
the grafting wax. The one we use is three of resin, one of beeswax, and
lampblack and a little bit of linseed oil. Cover up the graft entirely,
except don't cover over the lower end of this paper because there is the
drainage where the sap flows out. Then you put an ordinary paper sack
right over it, and leave it on for about three weeks.
A Member: You don't tie the paper below the raffia?
Mr. McCoy: That does not make any difference.
A Member: At what time do you cut a hole in the bag to give it air, or
do you do that?
Mr. McCoy: Not for two or three weeks.
(Mr. McCoy now gives a demonstration in budding.)
We will suppose this is a seedling and I want to bud it. I place my
budder on like that. Now I have got my shield up. Now I lay my budder on
the stock something like that.
Mr. Smith: Why not wrap over the bud?
Mr. McCoy: Because it will injure it. It is essential to cover all the
cut surface you can. Make it waterproof at the top, and have it open at
the bottom.
Mr. Potter: How long does that stay on the bud?
Mr. McCoy: I don't know as that makes any difference unless you want to
force the bud.
Mr. McElderry: When do you take that off?
Mr. McCoy: I don't know as that makes any difference. I have thousands
of them that have been on five or six weeks. I take it off when action
begins. It varies, it may be two weeks and it may be six and it might be
six months. If you have maximum budding conditions generally the tree
itself will tell the story. We frequently take it off and have to
rewrap.
Mr. W. C. Reed: Would ten days be too quick?
Mr. McCoy: In most cases, yes.
Mr. Reed: Fruit trees is two weeks, but pecan trees are not quite as
quick?
Mr. McCoy: Pecan trees will come through the rye about as quick as a
peach tree.
Mr. Reed: I am talking about cherry trees.
Mr. McCoy: I think about twenty or twenty-five days is about right. You
know as well as I do that cases are not all alike, and you have to know
when to unwrap.
Professor Close: How can you tell this if the bud is covered up?
Mr. McCoy: You can tell easy enough if the bud is alive, just like
anything else.
Mr. Mosely: You say you can't graft pecan trees here?
Mr. McCoy: I don't think so.
Mr. Webber: What do you graft?
Mr. Potter: And what will you do about the nut trees?
Mr. McCoy: I will bud.
Mr. Webber: What value is the grafting to us?
Mr. McCoy: You may be able to graft.
Mr. W. C. Reed: We can graft.
Mr. McCoy: Maybe you can, but I can't.
I don't think root grafting is a success, although we have some fine
trees that are root grafted. I don't know what it is but there is
something wrong; some of them are all right, to be sure but I don't find
it a general success. Of the two methods, grafting and budding, I will
bud.
Mr. Hargis: Mr. McCoy, I have a number of seedling pecan trees in good
healthy condition and I want to transform them into good bearing trees.
What shall I do?
Mr. McCoy: Mr. Littlepage will cover that.
The President: I don't know about that, whether I can or not, but that
will come later. There is one thing that ought to be covered, or
demonstrated here, and that is the method of working the hickory and the
pecan by the slip bark method. I think the slip bark method in the
hickory and pecan is a method that everybody ought to know, and also
this ought to be used with the walnut tree. Some of the walnuts ought to
be top worked to English walnuts in the North. And it's the same way
with the hickory through this section. There are thousands and tens of
thousands that ought to be top worked to fine shagbarks, and I am going
to call on Mr. White who is the most successful man in this topwork
method I have ever seen. I top worked twenty-six this spring, and got
twenty-three to grow; he did twenty-two and made twenty-one grow, so
that record beats mine. I will say also to those of you who are
interested, get a copy of Mr. Olcott's Nut Journal and you will see a
lot of good cuts showing the results of top working. To those of you who
do not know Mr. White I will say that he is associated with me in some
tree work and I think he is perhaps one of the most successful top
workers I have ever seen. Paul, you will now give us your demonstration.
(Paul White now gives demonstration of top working.)
Mr. Riehl: I would like to say a few things right here, I don't want to
be thought altogether idle. I live in Illinois, your neighboring state.
I have learned lots of good things here and I want to give a little. I
have been experimenting in the nut business for some time; I have
studied propagation and there is one point I think will be new to you. I
had difficulty in propagating hickories and pecans until I got the
thought of hermetically sealing the scion. I first used gum shellac, but
later I found that by covering the scion with grafting wax completely it
serves the same purpose as the paper. It takes the place of all that
wrapping, except right at the wound, and does away with the sacks. I
have tried them and I much prefer covering with grafting wax. Your buds
will come right through the wax, and you don't have to bother about
taking off the sacks, and there is no danger of leaving the sacks on too
long.
The President: That is a very good suggestion, Mr. Riehl. There might be
some discussion of that. It occurs to me that with that method it is
very essential you have the right kind of grafting wax, otherwise it
might injure your bark. Are there any suggestions or questions before we
finish the grafting demonstration?
Mr. Riehl: I wish to emphasize the fact that the wax must not be too
hot.
The President: What is your formula, Mr. Riehl?
Mr. Riehl: Four of resin, two of beeswax and one of linseed oil.
The President: Are there any further questions?
Mr. Dorr: Suppose I wanted to get a certain variety of tree by grafting.
For instance if I couldn't buy the white Heath Cling peach then my only
resource would be to bud on another tree. But suppose I struck a nursery
where I could get good seedlings of this tree. Wouldn't a natural tree
be preferable to the budded one?
The President: There are no true seedlings, so far as I know.
Mr. Dorr: Do you mean there are none at all true to seed?
The President: No, nut trees do not come true to variety. In other
words, Mr. Dorr, I might put it this way. In the big Green River orchard
over here there are some of the very best pecan trees, but those of us
who have been observing them for years have found it is only through
propagation we can get a Green River and a Major. It would be a failure
to get the nuts and plant them and hope to get the varieties that exist
there, just as it would to plant some nut that grows a hundred miles
away, because the pollen up and down the river would mix in these
varieties. It is the same way with the walnut, when you undertake to
plant an English walnut and get it true to the seed, you are going to
have a failure. If you plant a Rush walnut you may get a nut that
resembles it but there is no probability of its being a true Rush
walnut. That is why we have these discussions of budding and grafting.
We should be glad if seedlings would come true but they do not. I will
show you tomorrow, at Enterprise, the great variety of seedling pecans,
and I want you to look them over well.
Professor Smith: May I answer his question? I think he asked, which is
better the tree from the nursery, the natural tree, or a grafted tree?
The President: If he did, I didn't understand.
Professor Smith: That was the question, and I will say he can't find a
Heath Cling, unless it is top worked.
Mr. Dorr: Some farmers who have tried a great many experiments hold to
this theory: If you select the seed properly you can produce fruit as
good as the nurseries produce it. The things the schools teach don't
coincide with what those practical farmers observe.
Professor Smith: When you try to find farmers more practical than these
men here, you have got some to find.
The President: The farmer who says he can do that is mistaken.
Mr. Dorr: He says the same thing about you. When I buy a grafted tree a
storm comes along and breaks it where it was grafted. If I can get a
perfect seedling I will have a stronger tree.
Mr. McElderry: The very thing he is inquiring about has cost Posey
County thousands of dollars. Men tell them they have trees that are
better than the nurserymen sell and they bite and find they are
mistaken. But they get them and pay from ten to fifteen cents more than
they would to the dealer. There is no man on earth that can keep the
Heath Cling true in that way, or any other variety on earth.
Professor Close: I want to say a word. Two or three people have made the
statement here that it is absolutely impossible to propagate any peach
or other fruit true from seed. We have been doing it for years. I
believe the orchard peach will come true to the seed. With apples there
are groups that will come true to the group but not the variety.
The President: I am glad to hear that statement. I have understood that
the Indian peach will come true to that group but it will not be the big
Indian peach you have planted. It is a fact that some of those groups
have a tendency to come true to the group.
Professor Close: Yes, they come true to the group and so will apples.
Mr. Dorr: May I ask another question? What has become of some of those
beautiful, delicious seedlings in southern Indiana they had when I was a
boy?
The President: The same thing that became of Washington and
Lincoln—they died.
Mr. McElderry: It is a boy's taste, not the peach, that makes it seem
better than the ones we have now.
Mr. W. C. Reed: I feel that Mr. McCoy discouraged us too much about
grafting. I think either method he used will succeed very well. The main
point is the time of the year it is done. Up to a year ago we began
grafting a few days after the first of April, and continued up to the
first of May, and our success varied from ninety per cent to nothing. We
decided there was too much sap and went to budding. The last grafting we
did gave us the only real good stand we got, that which we did from the
first to the tenth of May. We had as good results then as we did in
budding.
The President: That is good, Mr. Reed. I think those facts ought to be
brought out and made a matter of a record.
Mr. Reed: I think it is more the time in grafting than anything else.
Mr. McCoy: Mr. Reed has a clay soil and that does not furnish the rapid
flow of sap that a warm sandy soil does.
Mr. Reed: You would have to begin grafting earlier.
Mr. McCoy: Yes sir.
Mr. White: Do you leave that cover of paper on when you coves it with
wax?
Mr. Reed: On part of them we did and on part of them we did not. In
grafting walnut trees this season we left some of it on.
Mr. Woods: Just a question as to the strength of that slip grafting.
Will it blow off easily?
Mr. White: The first year it will blow off a little bit easily. The
first year you will have to tie it.
The President: Are there any further suggestions? If not the next thing
on the program will be a talk by Dr. J. Russell Smith of the University
of Pennsylvania.
Professor Smith: Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: We have to
educate the public—my good friend down by the window, I hope he will
not take my remarks personally—is a case in point. He has come in with
an argument, which the gentlemen next him says has cost his county lots
of money. I am a grower of apples, an experimenter in nuts and I raise
peaches to eat. I am planting seedling peaches and I know that when I go
on that hillside of mine I can get little red seedling peaches and plant
them and get the same kind, which have, I think, as much sugar and
flavor as any big peach two inches or two and a half in diameter. I
raise them true to the type too, but I would not think of putting out a
commercial orchard of seedling peaches. My neighbor tried it, to his
financial sorrow.
But it is surprising how this seedling error sticks. People are going to
be buying seedling trees twenty-five years hence and thinking they are
getting the best to be had. Here is an article that bears me out. Here
is an editor who has published a very glaring thing. This is No. 139,
Vol. 113 of a paper devoted primarily to ginseng. This question was
asked: "What do you know about the Pomeroy English walnut trees and
fruit?" and the editor answers: "The Pomeroy walnut trees are all right
and you will find at least nineteen out of twenty hardy. That is what I
find here and we often get it down to 20 below zero. The nuts are of
good quality. Beware of the Pomeroy trees offered by the Rochester
nurserymen. These are grafted trees. Pomeroy raises his trees on their
own roots, all of them are true seedlings, and that is why once in a
great while one turns out tender."
J. RUSSELL SMITH
President of the Northern Nut Growers Association
Mr. Dorr: I believe I am as old as you are and have gone the same gait
exactly. I lost my job and went to farming. I was once a college
professor, too, but there are things I find now I didn't find then.
Two nurserymen come to me and sell me two Grimes Golden apples. I plant
them side by side and they do not turn out alike. Why not if they are
grafted trees? I am not knocking, you misunderstand me, I am a truth
seeker.
Professor Smith: I believe that. We always find something we didn't buy.
My head man says they jump in. I have some very fine specimens that came
by accident, and of course we have a certain amount of bud variation. We
find variety even by propagation. The trees will vary the same as people
will but they will vary a great deal more if we get the seedlings. The
successful growth of nuts, as of any other fruit, demands the use of top
worked trees from the best known parentage. That is the way we do with
apples, peaches, pears, and cherries. Nuts will have to come in the same
class from the best known parentage. The big thing today is to find out
the best known parentage and then spread knowledge so that no editor
will be capable of fooling people as in the article I read a few minutes
ago.
That is point number one. My point number two is a different one. It is
the question of the names of the varieties of northern nut trees,
particularly the names of the pecan trees. Twenty years from now there
will be a million people in the North who will gravely tell us the pecan
grows down South, not in Indiana, and that you can't grow them up here.
I haven't a doubt there will be a million people that will believe that
twenty years hence. How can we get that idea out of their heads? I think
we have an agency in the mere names of the trees which will cause people
to buy more, yes a hundred thousand or two hundred thousand more trees,
than they do at the present time. If we pick out one name, Indiana, what
does it mean? It will make a man ask questions, and if he has any
curiosity at all he will want to know if it grows in Indiana and if it
will grow in any state with practically the same latitude as Indiana.
But if he hears the name Schley, what does it mean? Nothing, because
practically everybody has quit thinking about Admiral Schley. I recall
eight varieties of northern pecans three of which have good names and
three perfectly worthless ones. Indiana, Kentucky and Green River are
the good ones. Green River is the least valuable because it is not well
enough known. Indiana and Kentucky are great names because they are the
names of great states. Then we have Busseron, Warrick, Posey and
Buttrick. The Busseron nut which grows up at Vincennes ought to be
renamed Vincennes. There will be thousands more sold in Vincennes when
it is known from the name that it did not originate in Pennsylvania but
that it is a product of Vincennes. My point is this, it gets a name that
shows it to be a northern product. I am not going to fight for that
particular name but it is growing at Vincennes and that is a perfectly
good reason for it to be named after that well known city. Now we come
to the Posey. It grows on the banks of the Wabash and ought to be named
the Wabash. Nobody knows anything about Posey County and what the reason
is for the name, but the banks of the Wabash where it grows have been
made famous in song. We can hook a sign on that pecan that will sell
twenty or thirty thousand more Poseys than are sold now. Next we have
the Buttrick which is found growing in Illinois. That is the reason why
those Buttrick pecans will sell under the name of Illinois. It is named
for a man but it doesn't mean anything in the world but women's dress
patterns and is not a good name for a pecan.
Mr. McCoy: A change in a name like Buttrick to Illinois is a good one.
Any name like this that tells by itself the fact that the nut is from
the North is worth a lot to the people who want to sell pecan trees, and
to the people who want to eat pecans, and can buy them reasonably.
Therefore, Mr. Chairman, I move that a special committee be appointed to
consider changing the names of these pecans and giving them names
showing that they are northern nuts.
Mr. Potter: I second that motion.
The President: It has been moved and seconded that a committee be
appointed to consider the matter of changing the names of some of the
pecans.
A Member: Isn't there a Vincennes in Europe?
The President: There might possibly be more suggestions, and we should
be glad to hear from anyone along this line.
Mr. Reed: I agree with Professor Smith in part of his remarks. We have a
walnut called the Ontario from Greene County, Michigan. If we should
call it Michigan that would indicate where it came from. But it is
widely known now as the Ontario, and would it be best to change its
name, even though it comes from Michigan?
Mr. McCoy: Wouldn't it have been better to have called it Michigan to
start with?
Mr. Reed: I think so.
Mr. McCoy: We have pursued these things for many years and we have made
some misnomers in naming them. I think it's a good idea to change them.
Mr. Potter: I am very much pleased with the idea Professor Smith has
advanced for renaming these trees. They don't mean anything now as he
says, and I think it would be a great forward stride for this
association to rename these trees.
Mr. Simpson: I think Professor Smith's idea is a move in the right
direction. We were the first people that propagated any of these
northern varieties, and my idea is to call that variety Indiana, for the
very reason he mentions here, that it distinguishes it as a northern
variety. I think his suggestion ought to be followed out as far as it is
possible. At least with several varieties.
The President: The chair takes the opportunity of saying that the
suggestion meets his most hearty approval. I have taken up pages of
letters in writing to people about nuts, and explaining to them that the
nursery from which they bought had nothing to do with the hardiness of
the tree, that it was the location of the parent tree that determined
this. I was struck by an advertisement last year which said, "buy them
from the nursery furthest north." That hasn't a thing in the world to do
with it. You may take some of this very wood we have here and propagate
it on the McKenzie River, or the Yukon, and say you are selling trees
propagated in Alaska, but the hardiness all depends on where the parent
tree is. These parent trees have been placed there by nature, and when
we distribute them we will distribute what nature has put into the
parent tree. These trees are there because they have withstood all the
climatic conditions, and nothing would be of more value, it appears to
me, than to adopt the suggestion for renaming them. In the first place
many of these trees are named for men not entitled to have them named
for them. Many of those who own these trees do not know their value and
object to anyone that knows anything about a nut tree going in and
getting bud wood, and are contrary and mean about it. It is very rare
that the importance of these seedling pecans is known to their owners,
and they are not entitled to any consideration themselves. They are
generally discovered by some outsider who had to beg to go in and get a
stick of bud wood. Is there any further discussion?
Mr. C. A. Reed: You are right about that. But I would like to go on
record in opposition to this movement. When pecans are recorded in the
standard works the names stay. The rule is generally accepted that where
the names have once been recorded no other name can be permitted. It is
easy enough for us to vote to change a name but not so easy to change it
in actual practice. How many of us will know these pecans that Prof.
Smith has mentioned by any other names than those that have already
been accepted. Suppose we do rename them, we shall have to explain that
they are the old pecans under the new names.
Mr. McCOY: We remember well when we changed the name of the Green River.
We decided that among ourselves here. The Posey pecan used to be the
Grayville and you know when we changed it. I call it the Grayville yet
because I got used to that. You changed it to Posey thinking it was from
Posey County but it really is from Gibson County. I have no doubt many
of these men here call it the Grayville, and then lots of men that hear
me call it the Grayville ask me what I mean as they don't recognize it
under the old name. I am in favor of changing these names. I named some
of them and you know it, but I didn't always name them right and you
have changed them here. Can't we do it again if it will sell them?
The Secretary: What is the motion exactly?
The President: As I understood it was to appoint a special committee to
take up the matter, and consider changing these names.
The Secretary: Why should we do that when we have already a committee on
nomenclature? What is the use of a special committee?
Mr. Potter: The special committee will report quicker.
The President: If it belongs to the committee on nomenclature to
consider the matter it will be best to do it now, immediately. If the
names are to be changed they ought not go another year, and if not to be
changed it ought to be known. The chair will be glad to entertain a
motion that the committee report tomorrow on it.
Mr. Potter: I make a motion that the matter be referred to the committee
on nomenclature and that they be ordered to report tomorrow.
The President: Do I hear a second?
A Member: I second the motion.
C. A. Reed: I am the chairman of that committee and I could not report
tomorrow so I will ask that if it is to be taken up by committee that a
special committee be appointed.
The President: It is Mr. W. C. Reed who is the chairman of that
committee, to which committee was added C. A. Reed and R. L. McCoy.
Professor Close: I would like to ask Mr. Reed if he is absolutely sure
about the rule he has just quoted of the American Pomological Society,
that a name cannot be changed. I don't remember that rule.
Mr. Reed: Mr. Taylor was the framer of that rule and in actual practice
he has adhered to the first name used, and did at the time he was
secretary of that society.
Professor Close: Have you not in mind the rule that a name like Posey
being given this variety no other variety can be given that same name. I
think that is the rule you are thinking of.
Mr. Reed: No, but that is true too. You know we had the Sovereign pecan,
and after that name had been established Mr. Taylor wrote up that
variety for the yearbook, and the name had been changed then to the
Texas Prolific, but he still retained the name of Sovereign for the
reason that it had been called that before.
Professor Close: It seems to me that an organization could change a
name. I think the idea is a good one. Take the name Indiana. I think
that name ought to be given to the very best seedling variety that is a
native of that state. I don't know whether the Indiana is the best one
or not, but it is now too late to change that. If it is not the best the
name will have to stick to the variety to which it has been given, even
if later on better varieties are found.
Mr. McCoy: I know there are some extremely fine pecans on the Illinois
River because I have some samples of them, a good bit better than the
ones we have, and I suggest that we reserve the name Illinois, which
would be suggestive of both the river and the state, for one of them. I
know the nuts are there and I think they are very fine. The Illinois
River has more pecans on it than the Wabash.
Dr. Deming: I second the motion.
The President: It has been moved and seconded that the matter of
changing the names of these nuts as suggested by Dr. Smith, be referred
to the committee on nomenclature, and that they be instructed to report
tomorrow.
(Motion carried.)
The President: We have with us this afternoon, the state entomologist,
Mr. Baldwin, who knows many things of interest to nut growers, and we
shall be glad to hear from him.
Mr. Baldwin: Mr. Chairman, and Members of the Nut Growers Association: I
am wholly unprepared to make a talk before this association and must say
I am not sufficiently familiar with nut culture to be able to tell you
anything of interest along that line of work. Your discussion relative
to the pollenization of plants was intensely interesting and clear.
There is no use in trying to dodge the fact that every plant has a
father and mother, and that father and mother also have fathers and
mothers, the same as we have. The reason I am not just the same as you
is because I have a different father and mother, and the reason I am
not just the same as my brother is because the characteristics of the
parent may show in one individual and not another. If your pecan trees
should stand out in an isolated situation and pollenate themselves the
individual nuts would not all be the same. We have peaches that come
nearly true to name, and the same is true of the Snow apple that has
been grown in the St. Lawrence valley for generations. The pollenization
of budded and grafted fruit trees or nut trees is brought about, in my
opinion, wholly by the surroundings or environment of that tree. The
well known experiments of the Geneva Experiment Station have very
satisfactorily proved that the variety does not change except in so far
as the environment changes it. Of course there are some things in nature
we do not understand as where very decided deviations, or wholly
distinct varieties arise; but the general rule holds, that whenever you
propagate trees, and get your buds from some variety having merits,
those merits will be transferred to the trees that are budded or
grafted, and will remain in them while the surrounding conditions remain
the same, and changes in the fruit will be effected only by changes in
the locations in which the trees grow.
I suppose that as I am the entomologist of this state you expected to
hear some discussion of things of interest to you in this particular
field, but I came wholly unprepared for that. In this state so far as
the nut growers industry is concerned we have not done anything at all.
There is a large field for work but I must confess I am wholly
unprepared to give you a talk on this subject. Where I was raised, back
in Pennsylvania, we have several well known bugs that the nut growers
have to contend with, and they are especially abundant with the
chestnut. That of course would not be of so much interest to the people
of this state until the chestnut growing industry has developed more
than at present. I am very glad to be with you and the discussions I
have heard have been very interesting.
The President: We are very glad to have heard from the state
entomologist and we want his assistance. We are trying to steer away
from bugs and we want his suggestions and help at any time.
We have a number of interesting people on the program yet this
afternoon, but the chair is going to take the liberty of asking the
president of the National Nut Growers Association, Dr. C. A. Van Duzee
to talk to us on any subject that he cares to discuss. I know him well
enough to know that anything he says will be good enough to hear: I know
him personally, the most of you know him by reputation. He has some
pictures here, and I shall take the liberty of passing them around for
you to look at, and I am going to say that these are pictures it
certainly does my heart good to see. They are pictures of his orchard
down South. Just pass them around please.
Col. Van Duzee: Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I told your
President the first thing when I got in this morning that I didn't care
to have any place on the program; that I would be glad to talk at any
time on any subject he wished me to, and do anything I could to help
along. That puts me in bad to start with. As I have listened to the
discussions of your meeting the thought has come to me that you are
following along very much the same pathway that the southern nut growers
traversed five or six or seven years ago. We are a little further along
in the growing of nut orchards in the South, but you are certainly going
to get along and be abreast of us in time. Perhaps I may be able to do
more good if I confine myself to a few practical suggestions as to how I
think nut orchards can best be produced. Those pictures represent an
orchard which I have in southwestern Georgia and have grown under
adverse conditions. The pictures show the culmination of years of
earnest effort. They represent what I consider to be a very reasonable
success from a practical standpoint. I am a farmer and the first thing I
require of my farm is that it shall pay. I have no theories; I have no
ideals but those which must stand that test. I am in farming to make it
a success; it is my business and everything I do must stand that test.
If it doesn't pay it is not successful. That orchard represents the
culmination of years of study of the problem of how to grow a pecan
orchard on my ranch. That bunch of hogs represents about one hundred and
fifty we selected about three weeks ago to put in our early peanut patch
down there to finish them up as pork, but it does not show my breeders
or young stock. I could talk hogs to you until the cows come home. I set
my mark a year ago last spring, after being twice wiped out by the
cholera, I set my mark at fifty thousand pounds of meat from my orchard,
and I want to say I have animals now in the orchard and in the peanut
field together to make that and a little margin to the good. I expect
our orchard will produce this year more than fifty thousand pounds of
hams, bacon and lard. The reason I am talking about this is that I want
to emphasize the fact that the growing of nut trees is a business
proposition. I want to say, in passing, that I believe no better thing
could happen to the people who live in America than that every man who
owns land might plant a few nut trees. It is a notorious fact that the
nut trees which do the best, and which make the most money for the man
who plants them, are the ones planted in the garden and immediately
about the home where the conditions are favorable for the best
development. It is also true that all the successful pecan promotions
that have been put over on the American people have been built upon the
records of those individual trees, which were grown under the most
favorable conditions. That is the source of all that magnificent
literature, and all these people that have been inveigled into these
promotions in the South are going to be disappointed. That orchard in
the photographs is eight years of age, or will be this year, as it was
planted seven years ago last February. It has never paid a dollar of
profit. You won't find any literature on nut orcharding in the South
that will convey any such impression as that. I do expect it to pay this
fall a small margin of profit. I won't attempt to explain all that but
will say that an orchard must be eight or ten years of age before you
may expect or hope for a reasonable profit. After that it ought to pay
well. It is well worth going after because it is one of the most
legitimate, safe, satisfactory business opportunities we have ever
found. I don't know anything that pleases me more as a business man than
the growing of a large orchard of nut trees, and I assure you,
gentlemen, you must bring to that orchard the same degree of skill,
energy and patience that must be brought into any large business
proposition to make it a success. My own idea is that the nut orchard is
a legitimate part of the general farming operation. If you travel from
one end to the other of this country you will see that it is covered
with apple orchards. Small apple orchards were a part of the original
farming operations. The fact that they have been neglected does not
alter the situation at all. If the owners of those orchards had given
them proper growing conditions, they would have been successful. In the
same way I say the successful nut orchard is going to be a legitimate
part of the general farming operation.
I want to talk to you a few minutes from a business standpoint. Suppose
you want to plant an acre of nut trees, and you buy an acre of land, and
you buy your trees and have them planted. Who is going to take care of
them? You hire a man who knows about the care of trees. You couldn't
afford to hire one who didn't, and you would expect him to put in part
of his time some other way. If he didn't your investment would amount up
to so much you couldn't make anything on the deal. I emphasize this fact
because I believe you should make your nut orchard propositions large
enough so that you could afford to hire the best men to handle them for
you. If you can't do this there is another way which has been practiced
a great deal in the South and which I hope to see practiced in this
section. I have worked out a solution of the problem, which I believe is
very promising, and it is this: Get enough men, for instance in the city
of Evansville, who want nut orchards, to go out a few miles and buy a
bunch of farms, and put those farms under the management of a man big
enough to make them a success, then plant your orchard, and use the land
for general farming operations as well. I could go on indefinitely along
this line because it is inexhaustible. I think it is the keynote to
success in growing nuts. You can't be successful without giving
attention also to the things I talked about this morning. You have to
analyze the root pasture and the soil. You have to observe from the time
the trees are bought and delivered, and it requires the most careful
attention. You can't hope to accomplish a thing like that until you do
give it your most careful attention. If you have money of your own, or
make your living in some other way while the trees are growing, and feel
that you must delegate it to somebody else, associate with yourself
other men and make the undertaking big enough so you can hire the very
best talent the country affords. In this section of the country land I
presume is worth a hundred to two hundred dollars an acre, and you have
got to make it pay interest. I want to talk about the figures. The
farmer or nut grower, who does not keep a set of books and can't tell
you at the end of the year whether he has made enough money to pay off
his bills and legitimate expenses, and allowing himself a compensation
for the time energy and experience put in the business, is not
successful, and I don't care to consider him, because he is not a farmer
as I see him. You must keep your figures and know how you stand. Before
I get to the photographs I want to go back to our convention at
Chattanooga. I don't know whether there is anybody here that was at that
meeting or not. I was third man on the program to respond to the address
of welcome by the mayor of the city, and I was new in the nut game and
new in the South. I went up there with this thought, "I will listen to
the other fellows, and take my cue from them, and make a little bluff at
doing the best I can under the circumstances." To make a long story
short, when the president called on the other two men to respond they
were not there and that left me with an audience of four or five hundred
people to talk to and nothing much to say. I apologized to them for
being unable to talk in a light way. I said, "I can't say anything
unless it is in earnest; I have got to talk about something I am
interested in." I went on to advocate this principle, and it is a
principle I wish every man or woman in America would grasp and retain
and put in execution today; that is that the calling of agriculture is
the most honorable calling a man can follow, and it is up to us to
inspire in the children of America the thought that such is the case,
and help them in every way to go out into the field of agriculture and
be successful farmers. That is what I want to say. I have no patience
with the men who farm and are not successful business men, because they
are the people that make life in the rural districts objectionable to
the children, and are responsible for the children of the best blood in
the country going into the turmoil of the city where it is largely lost.
You have to pay interest on the land you use, and you have got to pay
yourself a fair compensation for the brains and energy you use on it. I
want to call your attention to one other thing. This farm I bought nine
years ago from a man who had farmed it until it wasn't capable of
producing enough income to enable him to keep it, and I undertook to
build an orchard on that farm, and I have done it. Last October, where
these hogs are grazing in the picture, I planted a crop of oats and I
got forty bushels of oats to the acre the latter part of April. I then
turned around and broke the land up and planted it in sweet potatoes,
which are just maturing and the crop will run one hundred and fifty
bushels to the acre. Don't forget that that is two crops grown and
harvested in one year on the same land. I consider it the best treatment
for the land. I pastured the oats last winter with the hogs, so I got a
very material gain from the oats in that way, and as soon as my sweet
potatoes are harvested I will turn the hogs back in and let them glean
the field. It is a fact that we can make lots of pork on the gleanings
of a sweet potato field. And besides that these trees, each one of them,
will bring me four, to five, or six dollars' worth of nuts. That land
cost me sixteen dollars an acre, and there is a net income of several
dollars above the price of the land, and I presume there is an
individual growth on each tree that increases its value at least four or
five dollars worth of nuts. There you see I have several dollars' worth
of nuts, the sweet potatoes and the oats all grown on the same land,
besides the pasture for the hogs. Those things are possible to the man
who will go into the growing of a nut orchard in a business way. I have
other land adjoining this and I will also utilize it for these purposes
and grow such crops as I can grow in the orchard, because when the nut
crop is ready to gather, I must get the stock out. I keep my
organization employed the whole year. I have the best superintendent I
know of and I have to make his salary out of my business. I get the best
tree man I know of and he also receives his compensation from the money
I make in farming. Last year I extended my farming operations in order
to make it possible for me to keep my organization running full speed
three hundred days in the year. I am dwelling upon this line for this
purpose. Don't let any promoters ever get his hooks into you or tell you
things as we have had them told to us down there. Thousands and
thousands of acres of pecan orchards have been planted without a thought
of the things I am talking about. They have planted thousands of acres
in Georgia; they have not any organization and the man in charge is
inexperienced and they don't pay. Each year from the time I planted my
orchard, and got it to the point where I could count on an orchard crop,
it has increased in value, and today it is worth four or five dollars a
tree above what it cost me. It is a magnificent business proposition. I
am so in love with my work I could talk to you until the cows come home.
I want to impress on the people of the Northern Nut Growers Association
and their friends the one fact that in order to be successful in a
commercial way you must go into it right. There is no short cut.
The President: The next on the program will be an article by Mr. Olcott.
