Part 10
MR. C. A. REED: That is an old question--pecan on hickory. It has been tried all over the South and the Southwest, and you will see some this afternoon at Mr. Littlepage's place. As a usual thing, the enthusiasm over pecan on hickory has run high while the experiment was new. The propagator has found that it was not a difficult thing to make the scions live, and, so long as the hickory stock is larger than the pecan scion, so that the feeding capacity is equal to, or even greater than, the consuming capacity of the scion, the outlook has been very satisfactory and encouraging, and while that stage has been going on a great deal has been written. A little later you hear less about it, and less and less, until, finally, you hear almost nothing. But I will say this, that there are sections in the Southwest where there is considerable enthusiasm over it just now. Just recently an article was published by Judge Frank Gwynn which was quite encouraging, and from his point of view it is. He is on high, hilly land, where he has no pecan trees, and he has been able to get nuts considerably sooner by top-working these dryland hickories--the mocker nut, or "bull nut," as it is known down there--and so far he is getting very satisfactory crops. But it is the consensus of opinion over the entire South, so far as I have observed it, that where there are pecan trees suitable for top-working, they answer much better, and the final outcome is very much more satisfactory with pecan on pecan than with pecan on hickory. Now, with pecan on _Hicoria aquatica_, which Prof. Hutt spoke of, I can cite you one instance which is very interesting south of Morgan City, Louisiana. Mr. Frank Beadle, I believe, was the name, top-worked a number of trees that were standing in water, and he also top-worked some that he had transplanted from the wet bottom to higher land. Those that were transplanted lived and bore nuts for quite a number of years. The last I knew they were bearing quite satisfactory crops, but those that were allowed to remain in the standing water died very shortly after the pecan top began to develop. The entire tree died.
THE PRESIDENT: That is, the pecan top killed the native right in its own habitat.
MR. C A. REED: That's right.
DR. STABLER: How about the acidity of the soil on that higher land? Was that tested?
MR. C. A. REED: Well, there would be so very little difference in the level of the soil that I imagine the acidity would be about the same. When I said "high land" I meant land that wasn't over-flowed.
DR. STABLER: Oh, yes.
THE PRESIDENT: Mr. Reed, you made the qualified statement awhile ago that where a man had a choice between hickory and pecan stock for top-working, he should take the pecan. Now, in the North there are magnificent stands of native hickory--the Appalachians are full of it from end to end. Would you advise him not to bother with that?
MR. C. A. REED: There is another question that enters there. I don't believe that you can grow good pecans on hickory stocks on uplands where there is not moisture enough in the soil to grow good pecans on pecan stocks. It takes moisture to make pecans, and if there isn't enough in the upland soil to grow pecan trees on pecan roots I don't believe there is any evidence to indicate that you can get them on hickory roots.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, the hickory only grows about six or eight weeks every summer, and the pecan grows all summer. I think that answers the question.
PROF. HUTT: A case came up last year in the National Nut Growers' Association that was quite interesting. Mr. Smithwick, of Americus, Georgia, brought to the meeting and exhibited a number of varieties of pecan grown on hickory--fourteen varieties, standard varieties, grafted on a hickory tree, and they were remarkable for their small size. They were remarkably small--smaller than ordinary, woods-grown seedling pecans. There were Schleys and Delmas, and various other varieties that you could recognize by the form of the nuts, but exceedingly small. I believe Mr. Reed's point is the crux of the whole situation, that if you have a good supply of moisture they will make nuts of a pretty fair size, but unless the moisture supply is very large you get diminutive nuts. These were matured in the South. The hickory is such a slow grower in comparison with the pecan--that is, the common varieties--that it can't keep up with the pecan top.
MR. C. A. REED: Some of the nuts from that tree were on exhibition where you were this morning.
THE PRESIDENT: Then you have, practically, a dwarfing, with the dwarfing manifesting itself in the fruit rather than in the wood.
MR. C. A. REED: It did in that one instance, but, on the other hand, we have seen pecans grown on top-worked hickories that you could hardly tell from typical specimens of pecans grown on pecan stocks.
THE PRESIDENT: Isn't the bitternut several times as rapid in growth as the shagbark, or some others? That is, probably, one of the best stocks for the hickories if one wishes to experiment.
MR. C. A. REED: AS Colonel Van Duzee said last night, "there are a lot of things we don't know." This is one of them. I might quote a number of men who are right here in this audience to convince you that we don't any of us know much about nut culture today. I will quote Dr. Morris and Mr. Littlepage. We were talking about hickory nut varieties in Dr. Morris' office one night about the first of this year, when Mr. Littlepage made the remark that "the man who didn't change his mind every three years on nut culture didn't keep up with the game," and Dr. Morris replied that he had changed his mind so much in the last five years he had no respect for any man who believed what he said. Now, when you can't believe Dr. Morris, Colonel Van Duzee, or Dr. Smith, what are you going to do with the rest of us?
COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. Reed, I didn't say what you said I did. I said: "There are so many things you already know that are not true." (Laughter.)
MR. C. A. REED: Well, now, I will quote another man, Dr. Curtis, one of the best known pecan men in the South. It was Dr. Curtis that I went to for my initial experience in pecans. The first I ever saw were in his orchard in Florida, and I asked him quite a good many questions, and he would tell me a story and go away. And I called him up one day, went into his orchard in harvest time when he was gathering the nuts in the hulls and taking them to the packing house. And I said "What is that for?" And he said "Don't you see those shuck worms all through the hulls here? I am throwing them out there to let the chickens get them." "Well," said I, "can you say you are getting rid of the shuck worms by doing that?" And he replied, "I can see, one year with another, that they are gradually getting less." A year later I went down there before he did. He was in Maine at the time, but his orchard trees were just alive with shuck worms, every variety almost eaten up with them. I said to him, when he came back, "I thought you were going to get rid of those shuck worms by feeding them to the chickens?" "Well, there it goes," he said, "you get a nice theory all worked out and some one comes along and asks you a simple little question that knocks it all in the head." And that is almost the unanimous experience. What you know you have got to qualify if you talk at all. I am getting to be such a pessimist I am not much good in the government any more. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: The one hope a college professor of my acquaintance has is when a student comes around and says he believes he doesn't know much. He regards that as the beginning of knowledge, and I think that Mr. Reed's confessions, and incriminations of the rest of us, show one thing, perhaps, better than anything else, and that is the great necessity of organizations of this sort in which many men who are trying many things in many ways come together and give the results of their observations. No doubt, this whole question of agriculture in general, and nuts in particular, is so complex, it is so run through and through with so many different controlling factors, and, with them, so many new things are constantly coming along, that we are all going to be handing down to our children and grandchildren a great and, perhaps, increasing host of problems to be investigated, and new realms in which knowledge can be piled up for the benefit of those who wish to use it.
COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. President, may I talk half a minute? I can't help but feel that, perhaps, there may be some good brother or sister who may have been over-impressed with the difficulties, who might have been discouraged, who might have left this meeting, perhaps, and failed to see what this meeting is for--to stimulate the planting of nut trees. Notwithstanding the emphasis that has been put on all these things, notwithstanding the difficulties and disappointments that we are all laboring under at the present time, I feel that we have a wonderful industry ahead of us. I can't see any reason in the world why we should not go on within our means, wisely planting nut trees. It doesn't make any difference if you are seventy-five or eighty years old, plant nut trees, because they will be a constant pleasure to you, and, ultimately, a benefit to some one else.
MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President--
THE PRESIDENT: This is Mr. Littlepage, ladies and gentlemen. (Laughter.)
MR. LITTLEPAGE: That is a very important suggestion that you just made. If you were to ask the average groceryman in Washington City whether he wanted his son to go into the grocery business he would say no. If you asked a lawyer if you should make a lawyer out of your son, if the lawyer looks back over the drudgery and years of toil that it takes to make a lawyer, he would undoubtedly hesitate to recommend it, and if you asked a doctor or a college professor a similar question, they, no doubt, would steer you clear away from a university. And so, Mr. President, if you stand back on the difficulties in these things, there would be not only no grocerymen, but no lawyers, no doctors, no dentists, and, perhaps, nobody working for the government. (Laughter and applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I want to take the liberty of using thirty seconds in this period of exhortation and confession to come in on the same strain. After all, what is life for? How many of us want the thing that is dead easy, and how many of us want the job with nothing to do? We all, in a certain lazy mood, say we want something easy and want to rest, but if there is anything on earth that a man shuns above all else it is that little room with absolutely nothing to do, namely, a cell. When they want to break a man they don't put him at hard labor on the stone pile; they put him in a little room with nothing to do. The youngster who plays doesn't want a dead easy game. He builds a house, and, when he has done with it, bang, he doesn't want the house he wanted to build. And I must confess that if it were perfectly plain sailing and you could plant out all these nut trees and have them grow like fury, it would not be much fun. It is a fact that men like to achieve and experiment; men like effort. Suppose everybody in this country retired and could put up his feet and do nothing, there wouldn't be a name in the paper the next morning. Mr. Hughes, President Wilson, Mr. Taft, Mr. Brandies, and all of the great men who are doing things in this world would all be gone fanning themselves quietly. This world is run by men who don't have to work; they work for fun. So I wish to submit that the tree--if a man happens to be built to love plants that grow--that the tree is one of the great avenues of fun.
MR. WEBER: Mr. President, along the same line of thought, I wish to express my views with what Colonel Van Duzee has had to say. If we were to attend a convention of surgeons and hear different diseases and ailments of the body discussed, we would probably all be disposed to think that we were standing on the tip-end of the diving board into eternity beyond. But people keep on living just the same, notwithstanding the knocking of the doctors, and the diseases to which we are subject, and trees will keep on growing just the same, notwithstanding their diseases and various other troubles, and so I think no one should be discouraged.
THE SECRETARY: I just want to add my little encouragement. In spite of all the failure that I have had, and they have been many, in spite of the reports of failures of others and the pessimism of others, I have the same abiding faith in the future of nut growing, and just the same enthusiasm for it that I had in the beginning, if not greater. (Applause.)
MR. KYNER: Mr. President, I came here to get information on a matter that I am very much interested in. At seventy years of age I have become interested in nut growing--in nut culture. (Applause.) I am not planting
## particularly for myself, not that I expect to get any harvest from these
trees, but I do want to see them bear fruit--bear nuts. I want to plant the right kind of trees. I have joined this Association; I intend to retain a membership in it as long as the Association lives. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: My dear sir, that will cost you twenty dollars for a life membership. (Laughter.)
MR. KYNER: And I want to get all the information that the Association has. Now, if I can get it in fifteen or twenty minutes, why, let me have it. (Laughter.) I bought Persian walnuts at a nursery, cultivated them, and watched them, walked around them and looked at them, and along came a winter and killed them. I bought them from a Rochester nursery. Now, they didn't grow them there. They must have grown them somewhere else. If they had been grown in a Rochester nursery they would have withstood the severity of a Maryland winter. Now, there is something wrong there. This Association should take this matter up with that nursery. They should not be allowed to take people's money and give them chaff for it. I am saying this for the benefit of some of our members here who are growing nut trees for sale.
THE PRESIDENT: May I give you a bit of information here? We have a list of accredited nurserymen. This Association has a list of nurserymen in whose trees we think we can place more confidence than in some others.
MR. KYNER: I would like to get that. But now I have set out a whole lot of these Persian walnuts, and pecans, filberts, Japanese walnuts, etc., and I guess every one of them is a seedling, and I don't know what I have, and I don't know how many varieties of Japanese walnuts there are. I supposed a Japanese walnut was a Japanese walnut, and that that was all there was to it. But I get some trees from one nursery, and some from another, and they grow up and aren't alike at all. Now, I haven't so very awfully long to be in the business of setting out nut growing trees, and I want to get the right kind, and I want this Association's assistance in that matter, and while you are assisting me you are assisting people all over the country. Men and women everywhere are interested in nut growing. They want nut trees, but how are they going to know that they are getting what they want? I believe it is up to this Association to help them get the right kind of stuff. I came in here purposely to get your help.
THE PRESIDENT: You go on the excursion this afternoon and you will find plenty of men there that will take pleasure in explaining some of these things to you. Our plan is to go at one o'clock from the corner of Fourteenth and H streets to the grounds of Mr. Littlepage, who has practically all the good varieties of northern pecans growing there, and on the trip will be men who can answer most every question you want to know. I think that brings us to the point of adjournment.
COL. VAN DUZEE: Mr. President, I move we adjourn.
A MEMBER: Second the motion.
THE PRESIDENT: The meeting stands adjourned.
APPENDIX.
_Letter From W. C. Reed, Vice-President of the Association._
FELLOW MEMBERS AND FRIENDS:
It is with the deepest feelings of regret that I am compelled to be absent from what I trust may be one of the most profitable meetings of the Association. It is impossible for me to be present, owing to the fact that I have been summoned on a case in court in Wisconsin.
Having been honored as your Vice-President, I felt it my duty to attend and do what I could to help make this our best meeting, but fate ruled otherwise. Though absent in person, I assure you my thoughts and best wishes will be with you while wandering about the Nation's Capital, viewing its magnificent parks and basking under the shade of its stately Persian walnuts.
The interest in nut culture is widespread. We have had inquiries from many foreign countries, one of the last from near Bombay, British India.
I have arranged with the Indiana Apple Show, which is to be held at West Baden, Indiana, November 14th to 20th, for ample space for a nut exhibit. Anyone having nuts for exhibition should send them to me at Vincennes prior to these dates, or write for information, and I will try and arrange for premiums.
REVIEW OF PAST YEAR.
The present summer has been of extremes, very cold and wet early, followed by extreme heat and drouth. Foliage of all kinds not as good as usual. Nut trees, however, have made a very good growth, not as heavy as last year on younger trees.
Winter, 1915-16, while not extremely cold, was very hard on many kinds of trees, owing to the fact that the previous summer and fall were very wet. Most fruit trees went into winter full of sap, with buds in weakened condition. Pecan buds came through in good shape with a very fair stand in nursery, and one-year trees were not injured a particle. Pecan bloom was very fair, crop, generally seems to be light, in fact such is the case with all kinds of nut trees, generally, and most fruit trees. Pecan trees set in orchard 2 and 3 years ago are making a good growth.
ENGLISH WALNUTS.
Stand of buds in nursery poor; stand of grafts this spring very good where we used good, strong scions of well matured wood, 60 to 75 per cent, and in some cases Mayette was better than that. Where Eastern scions were used from old trees, stand of grafts very poor. All one-year English walnut trees in nursery came through in good shape. Eastern varieties began to vegetate or burst into growth April 15; Mayette and Franquette, May 1; Parisienne, May 5, and one tree from Grenoble, France, grown from scion sent from Department of Agriculture, May 25. These French varieties, I feel, are very promising, owing to the fact that they will escape late frosts. English walnut trees in orchard set 3 years ago, fourth summers growth, doing splendidly, 2 to 4 feet of growth, foliage perfect, varieties, Hall, Rush, Nebo and Burlington. Top-worked trees, 3-year tops doing nicely of Hall, Rush, Mayette and two or three other Eastern varieties. Grafting in nursery done from May 15 to 25, was best after stocks were in full leaf.
PECAN GRAFTING.
We have usually had best success grafting May 5 to 12, but this year, being a late spring, we did not commence general grafting of pecans until the 12th, and it seems to have been too late. Stand very poor, a few grafts set early in May with old wood, about 40 per cent. stand. We find old wood gives much better stand on pecans, and new wood on English walnuts.
BLACK WALNUTS.
Grafted quite a number of Stabler Black Walnuts, which were almost a failure. Thomas done better, but still poor. However, larger scions gave best results and have made splendid growth, many 5 to 6 feet, very strong. Buds of Thomas set last fall failed to start well. It seems we have something to learn in the propagation of the Black Walnut, as it has proved more difficult than the English.
HARDY ALMOND.
Two years ago we received some buds of the Ridenhauer Almond from Department of Agriculture. Some of these buds were set on a bearing peach tree; these have borne a good crop this summer, and were gathered August 20, some of which are on the exhibition tables. These seem to bear very young, of good quality, a very strong grower and very hardy; do not consider them of any commercial value, but for family use are very good.
BEARING PECANS IN NEBRASKA.
During the past year I have received photographs and description of the pecan trees 12 miles south of Lincoln, Nebraska, and of two trees on the grounds of E. Y. Grupe, of Lincoln. These trees are 20 years old, some having been bearing regular crops for the past 10 years. This season's crop is a failure owing to continuous cold rain at blooming time. The nuts on one of these trees are of fair size and quality.
With kindest regards to the many friends in the Association, and trusting that I may have the pleasure of greeting all at our next annual meeting, I am,
Respectfully yours,
W. C. REED.
THE FOOD VALUE OF NUTS.
DR. J. H. KELLOGG, BATTLE CREEK, MICHIGAN.