Part 11

So we have within the valleys what they call varieties, but they are not varieties, only seedlings grown from certain seed trees.

Now, with the Japanese, on the other hand, the situation is different, because they propagated by budding and by grafting. I got a number of the Japanese publications of propagation methods and their stocks, and so forth, translated into English, and their problems are just the same as we are going through right here now. They propagate true varieties by asexual methods, but the Chinese do not to any extent at all.

Dr. Cross: Have the Russians got any?

A Member: That's the question I ask. Do we have any seed trees in this country that are better than other seed trees?

Mr. Porter: Could the gentleman tell us whether the Chinese graft _any_ chestnuts.

Dr. Crane: Yes, they do so, I was told.

Mr. Porter: Well, the industry spends a lot of money, so do other people, and so on, in a proper way to investigate that. Why don't you find out where in that country they have been doing it?

Dr. Crane: I didn't see any grafted chestnut trees over there.

A Member: You said they grafted, and then you say, "I didn't see any."

Dr. Crane: That's quite right, and I talked to their best horticultural authorities that they have. Practically all of it is produced by seed and not by budding or grafting. It is just exactly as I said with the Persian walnut. China has no varieties of Persian walnuts, although sometimes you will find some farmer that will bud or graft his trees.

Mr. Porter: They graft up on the limb?

Dr. Crane: Yes, sir. Once in a while you will find one. They have a few real horticulturists. I met one man over there that would compare very favorably with Liberty Hyde Bailey.

Mr. Stoke: Dr. MacDaniels asked for concrete evidence. He wanted to know where there was an orchard with 20-year-old grafted Chinese chestnut trees. They haven't been planted that long, but I would like to give him concrete evidence in my own experience.

In 1932 I got scions from the Department, got what ultimately became known as the Hobson, from Jasper, Georgia. I grafted a tree in my front yard which is still bearing nicely, and in fact I have got two grafts on that tree about four feet from the ground, and it is very nice with perfect union. At the same time I grafted a Carr right at the side of my house that also has a perfect union about the same height from the ground. I grafted a scion sent me by Dr. Morris as Morris' best (which was pretty poor), and it is still living. At the present time I have perhaps five Carr trees that will average six inches or more in diameter. The oldest is the one by the side, of the house. The rest of them were grafted about 1935. One out of those five, when it got to be about six inches in diameter, in fact, about three years ago, it went bad. It is girdled and dead. It was grafted about as high as this table from the ground. The others are sound, and you'd find it very difficult to find where they were grafted.

I have Hobson, perhaps a dozen trees anywhere from six to 16 years old, and I have not had a failure on a Hobson that really was once healed over properly and got to bearing, not one. That's concrete evidence, Doctor, and that's all I wish to say.

Rev. Taylor (Alpine, Tenn.): Mr. Gravatt was about to answer a question about our seed trees, wasn't he?

Mr. Gravatt: Would you repeat that question?

Rev. Taylor: Are some seed trees better than others in the high per cent of good seedlings they produce?

Mr. Gravatt: Well, McKay has done some work and published it to show that on seedlings of certain trees you get higher percentage of bud takes than on others.

Mr. Chase: I think the question is a little confused. I think what you are after is, are there parent seed trees from which seed can be planted that would produce a good quality of seedlings.

Rev. Taylor: Yes, of good productive seedlings. No grafting to it.

Mr. Chase: I think that was answered. Apparently there are.

Rev. Taylor: Apparently there are in China, as Dr. Crane brought up.

Mr. Chase: He further brought up that those things are in the process of being tested here now, and he hopes for some information in--what was that?

Mr. Gravatt: We had Professor Beattie over in Japan, China, and Korea for two or three years, and he found in Japan that there were certain selections there, certain grafted varieties that they used for seed stock. We imported those into this country. We were getting ready to go ahead with the Japs. We also brought in a hundred varieties of Japanese chestnuts. But the Japanese varieties didn't do well here. What would produce well over in Japan didn't produce well here. But a number of those scions that we grafted in 1932 and 1933 are still living. We have had very good success with top-working chestnuts in our orchards. We have some grafts there of pure Chinese chestnuts top-worked on some worthless Japanese. Some of those have been there for 12 and 14 years, with perfect unions. But we do receive a number of reports of trees dying from blight and various other and sundry other causes and when we examine them quite frequently these have died back to where the trees had been grafted.

Rev. Taylor: I could enlarge on that question just a little bit to tie in with what Mr. O'Rourke said. If the nurserymen are going to propagate seedling trees for the trade for some time yet, where should they be advised to obtain their seed to get the best possible seedling trees?

Mr. Gravatt: In a lot of our regional distributions we sent out mixtures. In other places we would send out related seedlings, as "MY," "MZ," or "MAX," to different individuals. We have advised all nurseryman, all of our cooperators, to eliminate the Japanese; eliminate the hybrids. It gets down to pure Chinese. We have also advised again and again to take out the more worthless trees and propagate seed from the beat. But there are a lot of hybrid seeds with mixed parentage going into nursery trees.

Mr. McDaniel: How many people are going to take out trees now when they can sell the seeds for at least 50 cents or maybe even $2.00 a pound?

Mr. Gravatt: That's it. However, you take any of those Chinese trees over there at the Eastern Shore Nurseries, for example--nuts from all 19 of them have been sent over here, and they are all good eating. I have been over a lot of the seedlings of Hemming's trees. Mr. Hemming has several hundred at his own place. I have been over other orchard plantings. There is lot of variability among those seedlings. They are not as uniform as the parent tree, for some reason. Why, I don't know.

Mr. Chase: Mr. Howell, as a nurseryman, has propagated the Chinese chestnut tree. Would you care to make a few comments? Mr. Howell has Howell's Nursery in Knoxville and at Sweetwater, Tennessee, and I believe has some of Mr. Gravatt's early seedling trees and has produced a great quantity of seedlings.

Mr. Bruce Howell: A good many years ago we got from the Department five trees, and they grew and have all borne good nuts, and all chestnuts we have propagated since have been grown from seed from those five trees, and most of them are pretty good. One is a small nut, and among more recent seedlings we have got two of them that don't bear at all, or haven't so far. Now, we have got a bunch of them where they were set several years ago in nursery rows. At each end of each row the trees there bear very nice nuts, and when you get out through that row, the crowded trees don't bear at all.

I think those seedlings and those trees practically all make fairly good nuts and some of them excellent. I have got some samples. About six years ago I got a pound of imported Japanese I planted. The third year they bore and they have done very well, and all of them are about the same size chestnuts. They are as good as any _after_ they are roasted or boiled. That's about all. A good many years ago, I guess 30 years ago, I grafted Paragon chestnuts, and they did well until the blight.

Rev. Taylor: Does anybody else have this trouble? In North Central Tennessee we usually have a warm spell about the Middle of February, plowing time. We expect it every year. And then these Chinese chestnuts are the quickest trees to let the buds swell, and the bark softens up all the way to the ground on the young ones. Then we nearly always have a pretty hard freeze, afterward. So, for several years after our experimental planting was set out there they would get killed clear to the ground next year. Is that something others have the same experience with? How do you go at correcting that?

After our trees got to be three or four or five inches in diameter they didn't kill back that way. The bark seemed to be tougher.

Mr. McDaniel: That's very common experience in Tennessee and, I might say, in north Alabama.

Rev. Taylor: Nothing you can do about it?

Mr. McDaniel: On some sites it is not nearly so bad as it is in other locations. A northern or eastern slope with good elevation seems to be best.

Mr. Frye: I have had some trouble and maybe, had a good education about frost pockets. If you get them in high elevations you escape that. I had that trouble two years ago. I got some Chinese trees from Dr. Smith, set them out. They were his best seedlings, three of them, and they started beautifully. I transplanted them. Just about that time they got nipped off. Did that three times and failed to come out the third time.

Pres. Davidson: One other remedy for that that I remember reading about, I am not quite sure in which of our Reports--maybe Mr. Becker was the author, and that is this: He said that he cultivates until August after which he plants cover crops, and he sows cover crops that grow and they hold back this vegetative growth in the late part of the year, and it is really the late vegetative growth that causes the destruction. After he adopted that plan he had very much less winter killing in his plantation. That might be one way of helping the situation.

Mr. Hardy: We have had some killing. Usually in the second year or the first year after we get killing down to the ground, if we will keep the stock pruned back to one shoot that one will make sufficient growth, become hardy enough to withstand any cold, or perhaps sun scald. Also wrapping the trunks of the trees with newspaper helps to prevent the variations in temperature, which in our section is what causes the cold injury. We don't have sufficient cold to cause absolute low-temperature injury, but we do have sudden drops just as you do in Tennessee, apparently, and wrapping with paper does help iron out those changes.

Mr. McDaniel: Wouldn't you suggest the paper wrap in the summer as well as the winter and spring?

Mr. Hardy: Yes.

Mr. Stoke: It is not only the planter of the trees that has sorrows along that line, but the nurseryman does also. I had some nursery seedlings growing on flat land, and they looked all right, passed the winter. When I went out to graft them I found that on these small stocks anywhere from the size of a lead pencil to the size of a finger, the cambium was discolored. It wasn't black nut brown. Any attempts I made to graft those failed, and yet many of those same trees grew on. They were stunted somewhat for a year or two, and they left a brown ring at that annual growth.

I would say that the best guarantee against that kind of thing is to plant your chestnut orchards--and the nurseries--to plant on land that is well air drained. _Select the same site as you would for peaches._

Mr. Chase: I will say that we should have allowed more time for discussion. However, we have used up our alloted time for this period. Supper is at six o'clock, and we are due back here at 7:30. I don't know how you folks feel about this little session, but I certainly did enjoy it.

[Footnote 14: --Goldsworthy and his associates published several items along this line in 1948 issues of +Plant Disease Reporter+. His October 15, 1948 item reported a similar result of 25% technical DDT (with 75% clay) inhibiting growth of seedling peach roots on 1-year budded Elberta trees. As low as 25 pound per acre application affected growth in quartz sand cultures, whereas with certain soils, no significant difference was noted until an 800 lb. per acre level of the DDT was reached. It was surmised that possibly some unknown constituent in the technical DDT was responsible for the suppression of new root growth, and consequent slowing down of top growth. In the case of Blakemore strawberries, and also with peaches, this effect has persisted for at least two crop years. Goldsworthy and Dunegan say, "How many other economic crop plants may be injured is unknown, but it appears certain that some caution is necessary in the promiscuous use of the chemical on ... plants, either as ... sprays or as soil additions...." In these experiments, of course, the DDT-containing material was in direct contact with all the roots. Spray residues ordinarily would be present only in the surface layer of the soil, and should have much less effect on tree roots in that case.--J. C. McDaniel.]

[Footnote 15: --Dr. McKay of the U. S. D. A. found one tree only about 2.5% fruitful to its own pollen.--Ed.]

[Footnote 16: --There is a possibility of pollination from American chestnut sprouts in his vicinity.--Ed.]

Let's adjourn.

(Whereupon, at 5:30 p. m. the meeting was adjourned, to reconvene at 7:30 o'clock p. m. of the same day.)

+Evening Session+

President Davidson: The meeting will come to order, please. We first have the pleasure of hearing from Dr. C. A. Moss of Williamsburg, Kentucky, on Greetings from a Kentucky Nut. Dr. Moss.

Greetings from a Kentucky Nut

DR. C. A. MOSS, Williamsburg, Kentucky

I am glad to see all of these beautiful ladies here this evening. We just had dinner, and I presume I should make an after-dinner speech. I have always wanted to attend a Northern Nut Growers Association convention. I am more or less of what you might call a convention addict and speak on any occasion on slight provocation. I attended a convention at Quebec earlier this year, and after that I went on to Rio de Janiero in South America and attended another convention, but this privilege of being able to attend the Northern Nut Growers Association tops all the rest.

I am reminded of the tale of the man who rushed into the sheriff's office in Texas, and his gun was smoking, and he says, "I have killed a man." The sheriff said, "Who did you kill?" "Oh," he says, "I don't know his name. He is one of these after-dinner speakers." "You are in the wrong room," the sheriff said. "Go back in the hallway three doors to the right to the bounty room. They pay $5 a head for those."

My family fortunes, if there be any, were founded on nuts. My father when he was 16 years old was raised on Straight Creek near Pineville, Kentucky, some hundred miles away from Lexington, and they gathered up a wagonload of the old chestnuts, he and a hired man on my grandfather's place, and they took an ox team and took them to Lexington to peddle them out. It took them three weeks to make the return trip.

I come from Whitney County, Kentucky. It was named after old Colonel Whitney, the man who built the first brick house in Kentucky. It was in the fall of the year, and the mortar was freezing, and they mixed whiskey with their mortar to keep it from freezing.

When I get away from home they ask me if I am a Kentucky Colonel. That's one of the first things I hear, and I tell them that I am. And they want to know why they put that honor upon a small fellow like me, and I tell them it was on account of scientific research that I had done, that I had developed a new way of making egg-nog. I feed the chickens the whiskey mash and they lay bourbon-flavored eggs, and all you have to do is drop one in a glass of milk.

They always ask about the Kentucky Derby, and I tell them that the last I heard Mint Julep was coming in on the home stretch strong.

I am not qualified with all of these experts to get up here and talk about nuts. They say an expert is a fellow that learns more and more about less and less until he knows practically everything about nothing at all; and that's kind of my shape, sir.

Now, seriously, I have had this hobby of trying to grow nuts for a number of years. I grafted a golf club on a croquet post, and I got some wonderful golf balls. Before the war I ordered some Chinese chestnuts. I got in touch with Sakata and Company in Yokahama, and they finally came in. I didn't have any experience, and about all I had was some imagination, and I planted them out in the fall of the year like I planted any other nuts. I went out in the spring and investigated. There wasn't a darn one come up. The rats had beat me to them and eaten them all up.

I was a persistent cuss and ordered some the next year, and I put them up in fruit jars and figured I would plant them in the spring, and when the spring came they all had the dry rot.

So I ordered them the third year, and I made sacks out of fly screen wire and put those nuts outside, and in the spring they came up and I had a lot of nice sprouts about this high and put them in a seed bed with a board all the way around. My father is blind in one eye, couldn't tell a chestnut from a weed, and he pulled up the weeds and he pulled all the chestnuts up except one.

The fourth year I had better success, and I raised that year 400-and-some-odd chestnut seedlings, and I did more or less the Johnny Appleseed stuff with those. I gave those away in the community. I am, among other things, a banker, and I figured those would be as good as calendars, and I have not been able to follow the history of them. However, there is one of them I think is exceptional. It's a self-pollinator and is bearing heavy crops, and I intend to follow that particular tree up.

A genius, he is no better than any of the rest of us. All a genius is is a fellow that's got good digestion so he can eat enough to work long hours and good eyesight so he don't get tired.

So I was reading in a magazine about the Crath English walnut. They sent the Reverend Mr. Crath over to Poland before the war, and I got four pounds of those nuts he collected, and planted them. And every spring a cold spell would come along and get them before I could cut any grafts off of them. And I planted a Nebraska pecan and got some grafts from it, and my wife said that tree never did have a chance because I kept cutting the prunes off so they couldn't grow. I got several to growing, and then they didn't fill out the nuts.

I was talking to a good doctor here from Baltimore last night. We ate dinner, at the same table here, and I told him I didn't see but one thing wrong with this Northern Nut Growers Association: It needed a lot of young people in it, because if it didn't they were going to have to hold a reunion over at the cemetery.

I have done a lot of grafting, and I am not going into the details of that. I am going to say that I am glad to be here, I give you greetings from Kentucky, and I hope that I will meet you all again.

* * * * *

President Davidson: That certainly was refreshing, Dr. Moss. We enjoyed it.

Next on the program is Dr. Aubrey Richards, Whiteville, Tennessee, who is not here. Nuts for West Tennessee is the subject of that paper, and Secretary MacDaniel will read it for us.

Nut Trees for West Tennessee

AUBREY RICHARDS, M.D., Whiteville, Tennessee

At the present time I am attempting to grow 14 grafted varieties of Chinese and Japanese chestnuts, plus numerous hybrids and seedlings, eight varieties of black walnut, 5 named Persian and 18 unnamed Carpathians, 5 heartnuts, 5 hickory and hickory hybrids, 12 pecans, and 7 hazels and filberts. The total number of trees, including all varieties, is well over three hundred. A few of the trees have been under my observation for 11 years on down to some that I have just acquired.

I shall not bore you with a list of unsatisfactory varieties nor with the ones that have not had sufficient observation in this section, but shall confine my remarks to less than two dozen varieties.

Pecans I shall touch only lightly, as they are a highly specialized crop only a little farther south. Stuart and Success are favorites here. Schley and Mahan are good if scab can be controlled. Sun scald on newly planted trees is our greatest problem, which I control by a paper wrap made by cutting two inch sections from a 36 inch roll of cheap felt-base wall paper. It gradually weathers away during the second summer. I wrap from the top down in a spiral, and when I reach the bottom, I place a hand full of earth on the end of the paper. No tying is required. In this way I have reduced the mortality rate of young nut trees greatly. I am also a strong believer in cover crops and mulching, for Tennessee weather is very temperamental.

Although we get ample rainfall per annum, it is often not well distributed, especially during mid-summer. During the winter we have several days of balmy spring weather with a drop to possibly below zero occuring overnight.

Thomas black walnut grows well here, but tends to over-bear, with many poorly filled nuts on alternate years. I counted an average of 8 nuts per lineal foot of bearing wood on one tree this season.

Snyder and Stambaugh are excellent nuts, setting about all they can mature.