Part 9

Of the cultural practices, the most important is probably pruning. Sawing off the limbs growing on the trunk makes all wood produced thereafter free of knots. When the trees reach about six inches in diameter, one should select those he is going to call "crop trees"--about 200 of these per acre--and spend his time getting them to timber size and quality. The other trees are removed over a period of several years, so that you finally have only the 200 high quality crop trees left. The reason I suggest starting the pruning when the trees are six inches in diameter, is that that is the size of the veneer core left after the veneer manufacturer has turned the log for the thin sheet of furniture veneer. Remove the limbs and improve the quality so you get a 16-foot log free of limbs and knots. That is what the buyer is looking for.

I know practically nothing about growing trees for a nut crop, but we seem to have something in common in growing trees both for nuts and timber. Just a lot of it is "horse sense", with a few rules of thumb based upon scientific principles. You must give the crop trees space, give them plenty of room to grow. In the woods they start to grow in a dense undergrowth. The young trees soon reach a height where they begin to dominate their neighbors. There you pick the straight, thrifty-growing trees for crop trees and favor them in your thinning and pruning operations. Tree density influences diameter growth of the trees. In thick stands, trees are usually small and spindly. So plant a large number to give the crop trees good form, then thin the plantation carefully to make it grow.

Grazing and fire are very harmful to tree plantations. Most of the plantations we studied were grazed. A good many were burned. I don't think nut growers would periodically burn their stands to improve the nut production. It is the same with growing a crop of wood. Once the livestock begin to trample or compact the soil, tree growth slows down and when that happens it makes the tree more susceptible to attack by insects and fungi.

As to marketing trees, let's assume you have some material you want to sell. The one thing you want to know is, "how much is it worth?" That is like me asking you what my house is worth. I understand there are persons here not only from Illinois and Iowa, but from New York, West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky. Prices on wood products vary not only from state to state but also within a state as well. The things you ought to know are the sizes and the grades of the timber that you want to sell, since they determine price. Now, there are publically employed foresters available to help you. They know your local conditions. The manufacturer's markets determine what he can afford to pay you.

For example, we organized some walnut marketing pools in Illinois during the war. I suppose a half million board feet of Illinois walnut was sold for gun stock material. One company was buying most of the product of the pools. Later we found that this company had a market for low grade stump veneer. Most of the other companies would mark a half dozen trees for their stumps. This company would buy 35 to 40 stumps. Every buyer looked at the same quality and quantity of material, since the trees were all marked. In this case, however, the difference in markets determined the price the manufacturer could pay.

Another thing that concerns price is what we call "logging chance" or how easy is it for the buyer to harvest those trees. I imagine anyone buying trees in Pennsylvania would have considerably more difficulty in getting them out than he would in Illinois. The differences in equipment and methods used to harvest the trees all have a bearing on the price paid the timber owner.

Hickory is commonly sold for handle stock. Wood for striking-tool handles has a definite restriction in the specifications on the number of rings allowed per inch of growth. The Federal Government grades handles on the basis of growth rate. From 17 to 22 growth rings per inch is specified. Timber buyers don't want logs grown any slower than 22 rings per inch and those grown a little faster than ten rings per inch may be acceptable.

Now, as to determining the trees to sell. I mentioned a 16-inch diameter limit. A few trees smaller than this with logs shorter than 8 feet in length may be accepted if a large quantity of wood is to be sold. It has to be economically worth while for the buyer to harvest and transport the wood, or he can't afford to buy it. Each buyer of course has a different set of specifications. You ought to measure and _mark_ those trees you want to sell and ask the buyers to bid only on those marked trees.

Buyers like to approach the timber owner with, "You have some timber I can use. I'll give you $100 for what I can use." That is the same approach as if I were to offer $100 for your entire nut crop. You would probably say, "Let's weigh those nuts so we will have a basis for coming to an agreement." It's the same way with timber. There are two ways you can sell your timber. You can either measure your trees and sell on a volume basis, or you can mark certain trees and state to several buyers, "I have marked 25 trees for sale. What is your best offer for them?" Each buyer looks at the same trees, and you have a common denominator for comparing the fairness of each bid.

For example, we had a farmer in Woodford County, Illinois who had walnut trees, wild trees, but growing in a pasture grove. I jotted down the bids that were made. One buyer offered $200 for 27 trees, another bid $225 for 35, a third bid $265 for 40 or $165 for 35, and the last buyer offered $425 for 25 trees. The point I am trying to illustrate is that the farmer, without that extremely high bid, would have been unable to compare the bids because someone bid on 27 trees and someone else on 35 trees. If all buyers had bid on 27 marked trees, he would have had a basis for comparing the bids.

Sell on contract. Farm foresters have simple contract forms which they will give you. The forms can be filled out so that they tell what you agree to do and what the buyer agrees to do. Both parties sign the agreement, so there is less chance for disagreement later.

May I have those slides? (Picture showing large tall tree in dense forest.) This isn't a walnut tree, but I want to show you the kind of condition foresters like to see trees growing under. Nice tall stem, free of any limbs, good diameter. These trees show a rather wide range of age classes. When I talk to my folks about growing timber, they say "70 years is a long time to wait for your money." Here is a tree that started 70 years ago and is ready to be harvested. The crop is sustained yield.

I put this in to show you what we don't like to see. (Picture showing park-like stand of timber.) When these 100 or so trees are gone, there will be no others to replace them. Cattle have grazed this stand to the extent that it will be a long time before any other age classes develop to replace those you see in the picture.

That is a white oak. I told you there weren't many. Good diameter all the way up clear of limbs. When the logger cuts that tree he will have high quality material. The same applies for walnut, hickory, or any other species.

This walnut tree shows you how to mark trees for sale. One mark up here so the buyer knows which tree is designated for cutting, and one down at the bottom so you can assure yourself that that tree was to be sold. It identifies one of the trees you intended to sell; a penalty is involved for cutting any others.

I wanted to show you what a good walnut stump-cut looks like. These trees should be 18 inches or larger in diameter at about two feet above the ground to be worthwhile. The stump will be cut off when it gets to the mill, and peeled for veneer.

This is one of the walnut plantations cut for gun stock material. I put this in to show you how the buyers cut the trees down, and measure off the logs to get the best grade of material. They aren't interested so much in volume as in lumber. They want the best grade of wood, and they want it in that butt log.

I put these in to show poor quality logs that weren't worth taking. This is an open pasture grown tree. No care or attention given it, so the limbs stayed on and grew quite large.

This shows how they load logs with a tractor and chain. This "cross haul" is a trick of the logger's trade. This is the improper way. The tractor was broken down so it took five or six men to load it because they didn't have the tractor. There are some good logs and here are some poor logs.

This is a group of logs, at a railroad siding. Some look small, but at that time--with the market as it was--they could use the smaller logs. You see some of nice length, good form and free of defects. I mentioned metal. Here's a man with an Army mine detector. They tried them out to locate metal. This company uses this mine detector to test all logs for metal content.

Here's what happens. The metal discolors or stains the wood. This tree probably grew in a fence line. The buyers are just a little reluctant to buy them. If they do they cut them off this high so they are pretty sure all fence wire is left in the stump portion.

In this grove of walnut a wire is nailed on every tree. Such a practice ruins the tree.

This shows wasteful practice. This small mill in southern Illinois was buying these short bolts cut from small trees. Be careful that you don't sell trees that are too small and too young. It is like, I suppose, harvesting your walnuts before the kernel develops.

This is the result of fire. That log, from outside appearance, didn't have a blemish. Loggers left this part because it was hollow. The infection developed from a fire scar and rotted out the inside.

This shows the same thing. Fire scarred. Bumping machines used to harvest the nut crop or any defect or injury may result in something like this and decrease the tree's value for timber.

I mentioned hickory. Here are some single-trees that are made out of pecan. Hickory is also used. Hickory grows to a commercial size in southern Illinois but in most states it is too small and knotty. One time the Peoria office of the WPB got a release from Washington indicating that hickory was needed for axe handles. They released it to the newspapers. We answered letters for a month after that. Farmers who had hickory they wanted to sell had to be told that there wasn't enough hickory involved to make it commercially possible to market. In addition, there wasn't a single handle mill in the state at that time.

This is a couple of loads of good walnut logs. They were cut in Illinois and trucked to Indiana to be manufactured into veneer and lumber.

Dr. Colby has asked me if I had any methods of getting rid of stumps. We have worked for five years and we still haven't a method that is economical or easy. We recommend grubbing or burning them out with a small stove, or you can cut them close to the ground and let them rot out. What about the chemicals?--We have worked for a good many years and we have bored stumps until our arms ached, but we haven't found any of them that work.

Discussion

MEMBER: 300 board feet per acre per year?

MR. WALTERS: I said we felt that on good soil and by encouraging nature we can grow that volume.

MEMBER: What are the stumpage prices?

MR. WALTERS: Ranging from about $10.00 per thousand board feet to $300. There is quite a span and each grade is different. There is a prime grade, which is the best grade, which must be 16 inches in diameter at the small end at least. Each company has a little different set of grades. Even with the same grade the prices will range according to the size of the log. Maybe a 16 inch prime log may be worth $200 per thousand board feet and 24 inch will be $300.

MR. CRAIG: Curly walnut would be worth more?

MR. WALTERS: Yes. It is somewhat of a guess as to whether a tree will have a curly figure. If you let them take the bark off a tree, the buyers can tell. I know of one beautiful stump on which the buyer wanted permission to remove part of its bark to see if it had nubby growth. If it had had the figure, it would have been very valuable. The farmer said, "I don't want you cutting on that tree because if it doesn't have the figure and you don't buy it, the tree will be spoiled." Don't let the buyers chop into the tree to see whether it has figure.

MR. CRAIG: I bought two to get grafting wood.

[Editor's note: Mr. Craig refers to the Lamb curly black walnut, article on which appeared in NNGA 39th Annual Report.]

MR. WALTERS: There has been some work done on grafting or stimulating growth for figure. One method was to beat the trees with a rubber hose and try to stimulate figured or curly grain. Not too much has been published on this work as yet.

MEMBER: Do you think the figure could be propagated by asexual propagation?

MR. WALTERS: I don't know. I will say this; in forest trees, the inherited characteristics are the things we depend upon. If a tree has curly figure and the seed carries that characteristic, you may see it in the progeny. An acquired characteristic I don't think you can depend on so much.

MEMBER: Is it thought to be acquired or hereditary?

MR. WALTERS: I just don't know whether it is acquired or hereditary.

DR. ROHRBACHER: One thought came to me on this black walnut timber. It's a long pull, and it is one for our posterity. The thought came to be that it is for those of us who are interested in setting up something for our offspring. The plan has been brought out before of using a grafted known name variety of nuts. Plant those, and perhaps those trees as they grow would first give us that wonderful nut which we were looking for.

Symposium on Nut Tree Propagation

F. L. O'ROURKE, _Leader_

MR. O'ROURKE: I believe if you get 10 nut people together, you are going to have eight or nine propagators. It is the one thing that people like to dream and talk about.

I went through the list a little bit, and in order to save some time I wrote a resumé of what had been done. In order to accumulate that material I had to dig into some of the more or less unused volume. There is a wealth of information in some of those earlier reports of the Northern Nut Growers Association.

MEMBER: You can get them for $15 a set.

MR. O'ROURKE: It's a good investment anyway. At any rate, I think I am going to try to make a bit of an analogy. Suppose this was a church group who had been working on paying off their mortgage. Every once in a while they passed a hat, but instead of dumping that hat on the table they let those contributions accumulate, so that after a while they had the accumulation of 41 years in the hat. Someone has to dump the hat sometime and I tried to do that this summer, and I found all sorts of contributions in that hat. We might say this happened to be the hat. You would find some brand new fresh ten dollar bills, nice new currency, and then you would find some gold pieces (before Roosevelt). They too can be used because they can also be converted. Then you could dig back and come across some stuff, and you didn't quite know what it was. It might be a Spanish doubloon or an old brass button. Right there is where you need a little knowledge. You should be able to tell the difference. I don't know whether I was able to tell that difference. We will, of course, find a lot of slugs and buttons and this and that among the valuable pieces, so possibly we should sift those out and put them in the discard. You never can be sure what to discard.

Just as I said, every nut grower is a propagator at heart. A little wee paragraph may be a lead to something which would be of quite a lot of value.

This little brief resumé I passed around yesterday, and now this morning I am using my school teacherish techniques in passing around a sheet of paper. There is merely an outline. Pardon me if I insult your intelligence in getting out that outline. As you notice, we start out with the seedling and end with nursery practice. This outline should fit almost any nut species. It should fit chestnut, hickory, walnut or any. I thought it might be best to have a vote as to which one we talk about first, and then we will run down each particular species. I think we should have our panel come up front.

As I said a while ago, we know that practically every person in this room is a propagator. In order that we have this panel conducted in an orderly way, please raise your hand when you speak. I will get the question and pass it to one of the panel members. Which one shall we take up first?

MR. McDANIEL: Let's take the hard one first, the Chinese chestnut.

All right, chestnut. To be systematic, let's talk about seed. Anyone having any difficulty? No trouble at all. Who grows most of the Chinese chestnuts, germinates most of the seed?

MEMBER: I have trouble with rabbits, squirrels, ground hogs.

MR. O'ROURKE: He wishes to know of something to protect his chestnuts.

DR. McKAY: We don't plant in the Fall. I know of one person who uses red lead. We have never used it. I know that has been done. We store our chestnuts in cold storage over the winter and plant in the Spring.

C. S. WALTERS: May I interrupt? We tried 50 chemicals, treating walnut seed with them or putting them on the seed spot after the nut was planted. The squirrels lifted every nut except those that wouldn't have germinated anyway. The rascals knew the difference. We tried allylisothiocyanate--"tear gas." The squirrels would dig those nuts up and when the vapor got too strong they would go away and allow it to evaporate. Within two weeks they would come back--maybe two or three times--before they finally took the nut. We tried cayenne pepper and n-butyl mercaptan--the main ingredient in "polecat essence." We had squirrels all over our test plots, and the only nuts they didn't take were the bad ones.

MEMBER: I have had every other kind of rodent. I found I have to plant in the spring and always in a tin can, with rock wool over the nut.

MEMBER: We have used rock wool; planted in the spring. They will get them any time.

MEMBER: I did the same thing with chicken wire and no squirrels got them.

MEMBER: I would like to ask Mr. Chase if he has planted chestnuts on a quantity basis.

MR. CHASE: We planted them on a quantity basis and as some of you know our nursery is adjacent to a wooded area where you would assume there would be a lot of rodents and polecats, both kinds--four and two legged. I made that statement once before about never having had any squirrel damage. We don't have any trouble. We do not lose chestnuts. We mulch with composted mixtures.

MEMBER. They claim sawdust will help keep them away.

MR. CHASE: On the other hand, a gentleman wanted to get started with chestnut in the Smokies. We helped him get lined up and he planted in beds and these are perhaps a hundred feet long. We mulched heavily with sawdust. The area had been cut over six to eight years ago and had immense piles of sawdust. We mulched with about four inches and some animal got every chestnut out. We never knew what animal it was. There wasn't any evidence on the top. They got every chestnut which was quite a shock to him. I brought this point out that there _was_ danger and he was going to build the bed up high and cover with wire or he was going to get some of this old camouflage netting type and cover that bed for protection both against rodents and early spring frost. He didn't follow through on that so I don't plead guilty.

MEMBER: Does the Chinese chestnut seed have a rest period?

DR. McKAY: For some years we have had a friendly discussion with the Division of Forest Pathology in regard to whether a chestnut seed has a rest period in the same way black walnut, hickory, or some of the others do, and we are not absolutely set in our opinion on the matter. We have the opinion that the Chinese chestnut does not require a rest period. I will tell you that one species, the Allegany Chinkapin _(C. pumila_) will germinate very readily as soon as it is matured. It will start growing immediately. When you go into the oak species, you have a number like that. They fall to the ground, and put a root into the soil, become anchored, and grow slowly all winter long. We feel that the Chinese chestnuts are of that type. Perhaps the old American chestnut was that way. It fell to the ground in the fall and it sprouted rather promptly within a month or so and grew slowly. Perhaps the Chinese chestnut is not so much inclined that way. We have done this: we have taken them from storage at various times during the winter and planted them, and have never failed to get reasonably good germination. Others have. The results there vary considerably. Perhaps we can't be too sure about the matter. We simply feel that on the basis of what we have seen and observed, they do not have a definite rest period. Many of the failures that have been obtained have been due to poor storage conditions, where the nut started to spoil and perhaps the workers didn't realize it and planted that nut and the nut spoiled immediately. So you fail, not because of the inability of the seed to sprout, but because it was improperly handled and could not grow.