Part 8

A MEMBER: Were the winter-killed trees cultivated late?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes; and fertilized heavily.

THE PRESIDENT: Haven't you answered your own question?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Well, I won't grow trees if they do not grow better than that.

MR. MCCOY: Mr. Littlepage may think he has answered this question, and these other gentlemen may think they have answered it in a different way, but there are some rather peculiar phenomena there. I don't question the sincerity of these gentlemen, but I don't think they have answered the question. Whenever you transplant these trees and whenever you get to growing them in big quantities, you will have certain peculiar phenomena that you are not certain at first as to just what is the cause. Mr. White is just as near right when he says they kill in July as Mr. Littlepage when he says they winter-kill in December. And I will just say to people who buy walnut trees from our firm that when they transplant them under the same conditions as Mr. Littlepage, they may expect similar results.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I have never seen a northern pecan winter-kill.

MR. MCCOY: Oh, I have.

MR. MCMURRAN: Mr. President, this term "winter-killing" is a little bit misleading, and it has been a matter of discussion in the National Nut Growers' Association for several years and a great loss to many Southern pecan growers. A very common statement that one hears down there is "Why, our trees don't winter-kill. We don't have cold severe enough to kill them." But they do. It isn't a question of severity of cold, but suddenness of change. For instance, in southern Georgia one year, we had a rainy period in October; about November 20th there was a hard freeze. A number of orchards which had been fertilized late in the fall were almost wiped out. If it were not due to the fact that the term is too long, and we could say "damage due to sudden temperature change," it would convey the idea exactly. I saw trees injured in the fall of 1914 that didn't die until September of the following year, and I have a number of photographs in my office.

DR. STABLER: I believe, Mr. President, that the stimulation of growth late in the season has a great deal to do with the winter-killing of trees and other plants. I have noticed it in clover and alfalfa, and I have noticed it in peach trees.

THE PRESIDENT: I think Dr. Stabler has stated a very well-known principle, not only of horticulture, but also of agriculture. Last year we questioned Mr. W. C. Reed as to the condition of a certain top-worked, heavily forced, black-walnut we had seen the year before at Vincennes. We were confirmed in our belief that the tree was dead, but that another tree budded at the same time with the same bud-wood and not forced, lived. We had a dry summer that year, a wet fall, twenty degrees below zero at Christmas, dead apple trees. I suspect that Mr. Littlepage has a problem in the balance of tillage and top-working.

DR. STABLER: I think if he visits his neighbor, Professor Waite, he will find out how to manage trees so they won't winter-kill, because he knows how to fix it. (Laughter.)

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I treated the trees just like the pecan. I have never seen it possible yet to over-stimulate a pecan and winter-kill it. I don't say it isn't possible, but I have never seen it.

THE PRESIDENT: I can show you a few.

MR. M. P. REED: Mr. President, we have that condition in the nursery row.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Well, those are grafted, are they not?

MR. M. P. REED: Grafts and buds, both.

DR. MORRIS: In regard to the grafting of the Persian walnut upon black walnut stock. In Connecticut, we have three species of mice--the common field mouse, the pine mouse, and the white-footed mouse. These mice all follow in the holes of the moles, and they are very fond of the bark of the Persian walnut, and will destroy a good many of them. Now, with the black walnut, on the other hand, when one of these mice comes along and takes a bite of that, he shuts one eye, cleans his teeth, and then goes on to something else. (Laughter.)

Now, in our country the soil is practically all acid. The black walnut will grow in pretty acid soil. The Persian walnut almost demands a neutral or alkaline soil. So, for Connecticut there is no doubt that we really need the black walnut stock for the Persian walnut.

THE PRESIDENT: Any further problems that are vexing the orchardist with regard to the Persian walnut? If not, I think this is a suitable time to bury it until next year. Col. Van Duzee, a man who has had more experience with the pecan than almost any one else in the room, has kindly consented to make his contribution at this time. Col. Van Duzee.

COL. VAN DUZEE: There is a longing on the part of a large percentage of men and women that I meet to escape from conditions which do not seem to be especially favorable in the large cities, and to get away into the safety of the country. I believe that nut tree growing offers one of the safest of those outlets. I believe that a nut orchard should be a part of a general farming operation. I want to give you my ideas about inter-crops. Fifteen years ago the doctors gave me three months to live, drove me out of my business, and away from my home to prolong the agony for a few weeks or months, and I found, among my orchard trees, a reasonable amount of health which, to me, repays a greater value than I could reckon in dollars and cents. It has given me the privilege and the opportunity of removing myself from the turmoil of the city and the conflict of the business world to a peaceful, quiet existence, that, to me, is very much more satisfactory. Now, that is an inter-crop.

Down in Florida, when we used to get together in our citrus seminars and in our horticultural and agricultural meetings we used to try and make a man say on what class of soil his home or orchard was located, so that we might get his viewpoint. For the successful nut orchardist, in a small way, must, of necessity, be a successful agriculturist. He must understand soils. You can't have successful inter-cropping without understanding soils, and, therefore, I can't tell you definitely what would be good for your northern soils. But I can tell you this, that the first thing to do when you have an orchard problem to consider is to make an exhaustive survey of the character of the soil. If it is a fresh, recently cleared piece of fertile soil, under favorable conditions, I am satisfied you don't need very much in the way of inter-cropping. On the other hand, if you select for your orchard site a piece of land that has been worked to death, I believe it would be well to inaugurate a system of inter-cropping that would have for its object the building up of that soil and the improvement of the environment for the roots of those trees. In the South, we are favored with twelve months of growing weather. We plant our crops throughout the year. I am just about beginning now to plow for my oat planting. I am going to pasture those oats all winter with hogs and cattle. We will harvest our oats in May. We then follow them with a legume which will restore the fertility to that soil. In the present condition of the market for commercial fertilizers, I believe we have gone beyond the point where any man can afford to use commercial fertilizers to any great extent on ordinary crops. I believe it is possible to go too far in the stimulation of a growing orchard. My opinion is that a series of inter-crops that results eventually in a large deposit of nitrogen, such as we get from several leguminous crops plowed under, will have a tendency to bring that orchard into a condition--I am speaking now, you understand, of the pecan---where it will be susceptible to disease and winter-killing.

If you have followed me as far as I have gone in this, you will begin to see at once that the men who are going to be successful in solving these problems are the men who are going to learn the game. Among the human family, you know, we have a stock phrase that we use sometimes when a man dies and we don't understand the cause of his death. We say "He died of heart failure." That is a convenient thing to hide behind. "Winter-killing," to my mind, is another such term. It is used, for instance, in a case where an individual tree, for some reason or other not quite understood, "passed away." (Laughter.)

I have been fifteen years in the growing of pecan trees in the South, and I am free to confess that the most disturbing element in my life at the present time is the fact that we "have known so many things that weren't true." We have gone ahead fully believing that our course was justified, that it was well digested, desirable in every way, and suddenly waked up to find that we were radically wrong, or, at least, that there was a very open question as to whether we were not absolutely wrong.

To the person of limited means the idea of being able to produce a nut orchard at very little expense is very attractive, and my heart goes out to people in that condition because I have been in that condition myself and passed through it. Ten years ago I bought a piece of land for forty dollars an acre, and planted seventeen pecan trees on each acre. It cost me twenty-five dollars an acre to lay off the land, dig the holes, and plant the trees nicely, with about a half pound of bone meal mixed in the soil in each hole. I carried that nut orchard on, using some inter-crops, up to one year ago, when it finished its eighth year of growth, and, without burdening you with the minute figures, I am going to say we have sixty-five dollars charged up to it, and it will take $185 more. Now, there is $250, if I haven't made any mistake. I planted among those trees nursery stock, and I sold off, during the time that those trees were growing, nursery stock to the value of, we will say, $250, making my inter-crops pay the expense of cultivation and interest on the investment up to that time. So don't forget that. Now, this is a case where we are going to balance our books, as every business man does, and every farmer ought to. I have, up to the time those trees were eight years of age, invested approximately $250, and have received back not only that, but the interest on the investment. So, at eight years of age the orchard cost me nothing. Now, that would be the way a great many people would figure that proposition. I can't do it that way. I am going to charge that orchard with $250 an acre for supervision. Now, above that line (indicating on black-board) it looks as though that orchard had been built up for nothing, and below the line you see a debit of $250 charged against that orchard. There is not one man in a hundred that contemplates a proposition of this kind that is willing to charge his orchard up with the gray matter that he puts into it. But there was an inter-crop in that orchard, of health and satisfaction, which is worth more to me than my services, so I will put that in here as $250. (Laughter and applause.) Now, I walked across this morning--I like to walk, and I came across the park. I saw a monument right over here in a little iron circular enclosure, erected in honor of Andrew Jackson Donald, a man who died several years ago, the man who was partly responsible for the magnificent landscape gardening effect of which this building is a part. It said on the monument this: "His life was devoted to the improvement of the national taste in rural art." Down below it said: "His mind was singularly just, penetrating and original." Any man ought to be proud to have that sort of thing engraved upon his monument, and, gentlemen, any man who will go out and plant nut trees like those you saw this afternoon, ought to have a monument under those trees expressing sentiments similar to these, because he has done something which remains after him, and it is one of the most worth-while things that any human being can do. That is one of the other valuable things about a nut orchard.

Now, this nut orchard--this is no myth--this is a practical proposition. I was practically bankrupt when I went there. It is paying now in a small way, and will pay more later on, and I am going to leave it to my children as one of the safest and sanest investments that I could leave them, and I want to say, ladies and gentlemen, that the consciousness of possessing something of that sort, which can't be stolen, can't run away, is another inter-crop that is grown among those trees.

I sometimes tell a story of a little two-horse farm down in the South. I drove fourteen miles out into the wilderness to find some seed nuts to plant this nursery with years ago. I found there an old home which was the central home of a large plantation in days gone by, and there were half a dozen--perhaps seven or eight--magnificent, great pecan trees about the lot, and a vegetable garden at the back of the home. Those trees were loaded with nuts. There was a young man there--one of the most pitiful things that I ever saw in my life--a fine young man--magnificent character, and recently married, making his home in this old tumble-down house, making his start in the world there. He didn't own this land--rented this fifty or sixty acres of open land, and these trees went with the two-horse farm. I said, "My friend, you must receive quite a little income from those nuts." "Yes," he said, "I sell the nuts from those trees every year, for more money than I make from the two-horse farm."

I heard of another case down in north Florida where two girls were left absolutely dependent upon their own exertions, and they were girls who had been reared, as some of the Southern ladies have been reared, to be dependent on others. They didn't know how to go and fight the world for a place. They were a little too far along, perhaps, to take up that sort of battle. There were two pecan trees in front of that old homestead, and the old homestead was all that was left of the family fortune. It was furnished, had a cow in the back yard, and a garden, and a few Scuppernong grape vines. These two pecan trees in the front yard gave those two women approximately three hundred dollars worth of nuts per annum. They were magnificent, great, big pecan trees, and they lived from them the balance of their lives practically, with the help of the other things I have mentioned.

Inter-crops are nothing more nor less than the evidences of the master mind directing the problem of handling the soil in which the orchard is growing. Now, just simply go right down deep under everything, pay absolutely no attention to the wonderful stories that the promoters tell you (laughter), keep your money, save it, use it, and spend it--yes, but recognize this one thing, that the most important element in success in the small orchard, as part of the rural or suburban home, is a knowledge of agriculture and horticulture. It is one of the most fascinating studies in the world, and I have no doubt but what you will find that you can go right along inter-cropping with vegetables and other crops, bush fruits, strawberries, and all those things for the first few years after you plant your nut trees, and even if they all die you will have been able to break even on the commercial side of the proposition, and then you will have the additional years of experience, which no nut orchardist can dispense with. You can't buy it with money or get it out of books. You have got to dig it out of the ground yourself. (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: I am going to take the liberty of emphasizing one point the Colonel made. He told you about the great number of things they knew down South that were not so. I wish to give some geographical spread to his generalities. We are in the same condition in the North. If you will stop and look clear through an agricultural idea, you will be astonished, ladies and gentlemen, absolutely astonished, to see how, mostly, we don't know it. The other day I happened to be walking through an apple orchard with the official horticulturist, and in response to some remark he made I asked: "Do you know that, or do you think it?" "Has that been experimentally proven?" He answered: "No, it has not." Most of the things we read in the books and hear in this place and other places we don't know. We think we know, but when we come to a show-down we really haven't got experimental data. I know of no people to whom that thing needs to be emphasized more than to the Northern Nut Growers' Association.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9TH, AT 10.30 A. M.

Meeting called to order by the President.

THE PRESIDENT: The first order of business, I believe, will be the report of the Nominating Committee.

THE SECRETARY: The report of the Nominating Committee is the following: For President, W. C. Reed, Vincennes, Indiana; Vice-President, W. N. Hutt, Raleigh, North Carolina; Secretary-Treasurer, Dr. W. C. Deming, Georgetown, Connecticut.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Mr. President, I move that the report of this Nominating Committee be accepted and adopted, and these officers declared elected.

THE PRESIDENT: Do I hear a second?

A MEMBER: Second the motion.

THE PRESIDENT: The nomination of this list is moved and seconded. Is there any discussion? If not, all those in favor will say "aye;" opposed, like sign, it is carried, and they are elected.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: While I am on the floor, I want to read a resolution which I have drafted, and I will read the clauses separately:

"Owing to the fatal character, the unchecked and rapid spread of the chestnut blight," is there any question about that? If that is not true, let somebody hold up his hand.

"Owing to the fact that it has been widely disseminated through the shipment of nursery stock;" is that correct?

"Owing to the fact that in the first stages the disease cannot be easily detected;" is that true?

"Owing to the fact that the young trees apparently have a temporary immunity from the disease;"

"Therefore, the Northern Nut Growers' Association believes that the continued free shipment of chestnut nursery stock will be productive of endless destruction of property in those places where the chestnut trees haven't yet the disease." If that is unsound, why, somebody say so.

"Therefore, be it resolved, that we, the Northern Nut Growers' Association, suggest that the Secretary of Agriculture prohibit the shipment of chestnut nursery stock, except in the localities known to have the blight, and that with each permit for shipment shall go a bulletin or circular giving the important facts about the chestnut blight. The only exception to this regulation shall be the shipments for experimental purposes, and such shipments must have the above mentioned permit, and the name of the nursery from which such trees have come, and must be inspected by Federal inspectors." I assume, of course, that inspection is a general inspection. I don't mean each particular shipment. If there are any questions about that, why, I will let the chair answer them.

DR. ULMAN: Mr. Littlepage, I would like to ask a question, or, rather, offer a criticism. If I understand you rightly, you say, "except in the districts where blight is prevalent." As a matter of fact, sir, the

## particular nursery that advertises the chestnut tree works within a

radius of possibly 250 miles of Rochester, in a district where there are many prospective horticulturists. One of the things that impressed me more than anything else in the report of the Secretary was the fact that we have lost a large number of members, and that we haven't attracted to ourselves many new members. So far as my personal experience goes, if I were to choose the one method of being most thoroughly disliked, it would be to ask my neighbors, particularly those who do not know me, to become members of any kind of a nut association. There is a glamour about planting, and it is a sort of a disease with some people, year after year, to seek for novelties. These nut tree advertisements that read so well attract many purchasers. Right here in this section people are buying nut trees that they are going to plant in a blighted district, and these people, when they see what utter failures they have, will be so disgusted with nut growing that when you approach them you cannot talk nuts to them, and you will never have them join the Association. More and more are leaving the Association, and very few new ones are coming in to take their places. So I think the resolution ought to be changed.

THE PRESIDENT: In what respect would you have it changed?

DR. ULMAN: To apply generally.

MR. LITTLEPAGE: Yes. Well, I agree very largely with what the doctor says. I have always felt that the success of this organization--the success of the nut industry as a whole--depended upon its being upon an entirely truthful, fair and honest basis. I would rather see a crooked cashier in a bank than a crooked nurseryman or tree man. The cashier you can check up at 4:30 every afternoon; you can't check up the crooked tree man for about ten years. I think the worst of all discouraging things to people who want to go to the country to build up farms and homes is to run into alluring, but misleading, advertisements. I have an abounding faith in tree culture. I think that the pecan tree, the black walnut, varieties of the English walnut and of a number of other nut trees, are going to make it most possible and more desirable for men to go to the country, but I think the success of those things depends upon giving those people, as far as possible, facts, and not misleading them. Wherever a man sets a tree that is a failure you have a man as a failure generally as a tree man, and wherever you get a man to set a tree that succeeds, you have a living, walking advocate of the tree business. This Association has been fortunate all along in its policies. It has always stood against the fraudulent promotions; it has always stood against fraudulent nursery stock; it has always stood against fraudulent representations, and I think, for that reason, that its future is reasonably safe, assuming that is its continued policy.

THE PRESIDENT: Do you accept Dr. Ulman's amendment?

MR. LITTLEPAGE: I accept it.