Part 20

My confidence in this outcome had never been shaken by the doubts of others. Few seemed to share this belief with me, and for this reason I have never pushed the sale of Lamb trees. Now I do not hesitate to state that curly figure will reproduce in any propagated Lamb trees, as the evidence before you here is stronger than any argument.

One purpose of the Northern Nut Growers Association is to encourage the perpetuation by propagation of the better varieties of nut trees. I consider the Lamb variety one of the best walnut trees known from a timber point of view, and until a better variety is found I shall continue to propagate Lamb black walnut trees.

+Ed. note:+ The nuts on Lamb trees, as seen at Norris, Tennessee, during this meeting, appear to be of at least average size and have better than average shell structure. They probably would be well adapted to machine-cracking. Thus the Lamb would not be a bad variety to grow for its nuts. Or we could double-work the trees, to have each tree with a good trunk of the Lamb wood growing beneath a fruiting top of any desired walnut variety. One or two of our members already have made a start on this latter scheme of propagation.

+Author's Note:+ The Lamb variety is a rapid and upright grower and should be well adapted as a stock for the purpose suggested.

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President Davidson: I don't think one can minimize the importance of what Mr. Wilkinson has done with the Lamb curly walnut. There are possibilities here that are of immense value to those who are interested in timber. Now, I am very, very sorry to put off the rest of this program until this afternoon. Possibly we can work a part of it then. Meantime, we had better adjourn.

Mr. Chase says that he has arranged for a group picture to be taken at the Community Building at one o'clock. Let's everyone be there at one o'clock. That means, of course, that you are going to cut the sandwich and coffee pretty short.

All right, let's adjourn.

(Luncheon recess was taken.)

+Tuesday Afternoon Session+

President Davidson: Come to order, please. The first speaker on the afternoon program is Mr. Shivery. I think I will get Mr. Chase to say a word.

Mr. Chase: Our next speaker is Mr. George Shivery, Extension Forester for the University of Tennessee, and I know that the interest of this Association is in the planting of improved black walnuts, and I simply can say this man arranged for the planting of more Thomas walnut trees than any other man in the world. George Shivery.

The Black Walnut Situation in Tennessee

GEORGE B. SHIVERY, Extension Forester, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee.

Mr. Shivery: Mr. Chairman and members of the Association: I certainly appreciate that compliment made by Mr. Chase, and I want to assure all of you that we certainly are interested in the black walnut in Tennessee. In the past we have had to depend pretty much on the wild black walnut, and we will for years in the future. But we have done everything possible to get distribution on this Thomas improved black walnut which has been propagated here through the efforts of Mr. Chase, Mr. Zarger and other members in his division.

It seems to me that this black walnut kernel industry is sort of a tradition, particularly in East Tennessee. If you have lived in this state as long as I have, you have become curious about its history. Well, in the early days there were no railroads in this state, and commerce moved pretty much by means of wagon team, and the supply center seemed to be Baltimore, Maryland. Now, I can visualize very well that on outbound trips they doubtless carried black walnut kernels, and on the way in, of course, they'd bring clothing and other materials that were not produced here at home.

In the early days they produced tremendous amounts of maple sugar and maple syrup. Doubtless this was consumed at home and nowadays we don't have any evidence of that, because the climatic conditions in New York State and other northern states and New England are much better suited to the flow of the sap. The weather, I believe, is not so changeable up there. Our weather is changeable. We may have a very severe cold week, and then in ten days it will be balmy and pretty weather. We haven't made any effort to bring back the sugar maple industry. We don't consider it economic in this state, because cane sugar in the past has been cheap in price, and then we have another product that some of you may not be familiar with, sorghum molasses. That serves as dessert lots of times in many meals, hot biscuits and sorghum to finish up the meal.

Now, I might mention something about the size of the black walnut industry in this state. We estimate that there are eight million pounds of uncracked whole walnuts produced on the average in a normal crop year in Tennessee, and there is another five million pounds that is never gathered, never hulled, never enters the market, never used, and the value of this crop in a normal year would be around $750,000. That is for the nuts, the fruit, the kernels. If you speak of timber it will amount to $960,000. That is in the form of lumber and veneers, and if you figure that in the form of a log at the shipping point, we'd reduce that figure and say it would be $480,000.

I think to understand this state you have to give some consideration to physiographic regions, and if you will bear with me I'd like to sketch through these regions of the state, because they have a bearing on production of black walnut. Here in the east we have the East Tennessee Mountains, and proceeding westward we have the Great Valley of East Tennessee. It goes all the way down to Chattanooga, up through Bristol, on up through Virginia to Hagerstown, Maryland, all the way up to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

We have fine soil, and we also have different kinds of shale in that valley. Then we proceed westward. We come to the Cumberland Plateau, and the elevation of this plateau is around 2,000 feet. It is higher than this valley. Then we cross that and we reach this area (indicating on map). That is what we call the Highland Rim. That is made up of limestone soil of a different character, usually, than that in this East Tennessee valley. That is what we term the Eastern Highland Rim, and this around here (indicating) we term the Western Highland Rim. And this red portion would be the Central Basin in which Nashville is situated. Then you would travel through this central elevation, come up on the Western Highland Rim, and then you come up here and you cross the Tennessee River flowing north. Then you get into West Tennessee.

Now, that is coastal plain soil, and as you approach the Mississippi River here you have a covering of what the Germans call loess, fine, wind-blown material, silt loam. So that very sketchily gives you some idea of the physiographic regions in this state.

Now you want to know where these black walnuts are grown. Well, up about here (indicating the northeast) we have the towns of Greeneville and Rogersville and Morristown and Jonesboro, the counties of Washington County, Greene County, Hawkins County, say, ten counties; radiating around those ten counties you have in the past had great quantities of walnut kernels produced and sold. Now, go on down this valley past Knoxville, and McMinn County (southeast) has some years produced heavy crops of walnuts. So you have heavy production all through the valley.

There's another center, we might term it, of about six counties in this central basin. But I don't want you to get the wrong impression, because walnuts grow in almost any county in this state, but I am mentioning these greater producing areas. And this County of Williamson south of Nashville in years past has sent plenty of walnuts to market. So that's a walnut producing area. And up here in this Highland Rim we have some counties by the name of Pickett and Overton and Clay County. Well, they produce walnuts, and the people up there have in the past cracked out a lot of walnuts. And in Montgomery County they produce walnuts. So the normal trade centers where these walnuts move is really to a great degree here at this town of Morristown in East Tennessee, and Nashville in Middle Tennessee, and this Middle Tennessee center draws from Kentucky. In fact, these four or five large shelling concerns know about the walnuts pretty much all over the entire walnut producing territory.

Through the years the Agricultural Extension Service, University of Tennessee, with which I am connected, has been keenly interested in assisting in any way we can to get additional income out of walnut kernels, and in recent years the whole uncracked walnut. And even though I am a forester I can see the possibilities of this, and we like to carry it along. In fact, I consider walnut as kind of a dual-purpose tree, fine for timber production, also for production of nuts, walnut meats or kernels. You might term it a triple-purpose tree. I don't think there is any better tree than that for a shade tree in pastures, in the field, and around the home, because for one reason it makes what we term in this state a "cold shade," and it is not a hot shade like you get under a sugar maple. The maple has a dense foliage. And as Mr. Chance indicated this morning, walnut is usually associated with blue grass. Blue grass will grow under it.

I guess some of you here remember the years of the depression, and I remember in 1932, for example, we had a heavy crop of black walnuts in the state. Then I believe the price for kernels of 15 cents a pound would have been a good price during that year, and some of them probably sold for less. So if we had the time we would follow through all the years, beginning with 1927, but just to make it as brief as possible, I will leave those out, but I would like to mention the year 1941. It sort of disrupted things in the kernel industry, because at that time the Pure Food and Drug people came in here and set up regulations, and it interfered with the merchandising of these kernels, because the producer had to satisfy certain sanitary regulations, and it really sounded worse than it was. Anyway, it confused our people, and probably that is about the year in which we had this big shift from the production of walnut kernels cracked out at home to a sale of uncracked walnuts to these shelling plants.

Then another year that I think of (we always think of these as walnut crop years) was 1945, and that year we got better prices, probably, than ever before or since, and a lot of our country people were able to sell hulled uncracked walnuts as high as $6 per hundred pounds.

We will continue to be interested in this industry, but, of course, nowadays the wage scale is higher and money is not worth as much as it was in the past, so it really seems to me that in order to get out this crop we just have to try to make the price a little more attractive.

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President Davidson: "We are now going to hear from Mr. Shessler of Ohio, on his method of grafting, and I wish to assure you that he knows what he is talking about. He has done a lot of it.

Grafting Walnuts in Ohio

SYLVESTER SHESSLER, Genoa, Ohio

In 1934 the Ohio Nut Growers Association conducted a black walnut nut contest. I read about it in the _Ohio Farmer_. As soon as the names of the winners appeared in that publication, each owner was contacted for some nuts from the prize winning trees. Answers were received from nine of the 10 winners. I did not receive nuts from the Hoover tree. The Brown nuts I planted came up in 1935 and the trees are now 22 feet high, with spread of 22 feet, and are 27 Inches in circumference. The Tritten prize nuts were planted in a fence row. These did not come up the first year. The next year I plowed and disked the patch of ground and planted potatoes. To my surprise the Tritten seedlings came up with the potatoes. I let them grow and I now have five trees from these nuts. All of these trees produce nuts which resemble the original Tritten nut and have good cracking quality. One in particular fills out nicely, has a very thin hull, and is a little larger than the original Tritten. I have named it the Shessler. The Brown seedling trees also produce good nuts. The seedling trees from the Cowle nuts produce nuts with rough shells.

Following my nut planting project I began to collect scions from all of the original trees. Mr. Homer Jacobs, of Kent, Ohio, supplied me with scions from the Tritten tree. The next year Mr. Jacobs asked me to send him scions from the Brown tree as he intended to bench-graft some. I have planted nuts along a road 80 rods long, so that I could have many stocks to top-work. I began to graft in 1935, using the seedling trees as stock. I now have 200 seedling black walnut trees, 100 grafted black walnut trees, 25 grafted Persian walnuts, 20 chestnut trees, two "buartnuts," 15 heartnuts, six pecans, one butternut, 20 grafted hickory trees and five persimmons. Some of these trees are planted in orchard form, others are scattered along fence rows.

For grafting, I cut scions so that there is about four inches of two-year-old wood at the base and some one-year-old wood with small matured buds. These small buds will grow, as a rule. The scions are kept in damp sawdust until used. I like the stock to be a half to one inch in diameter. I wait until the trees are in full leaf before I graft. After leafing out the stock does not bleed. If I find that the stock is bleeding hard when I cut back, I wait a few days before grafting. It is a waste of time to graft when the stock is bleeding. I have grafted very early when the bark would not bleed at all. I just dug down into the cambium layer and put in the scion. I tried one Persian and three black walnuts like this and all grew. I use the slot bark method of grafting, as described in Mr. Reed's bulletin [U.S.D.A. Farmers Bull. 1501]. The stock is cut straight across and I put the lower bud just above the bark on the outside. I roughen the bark of the scion that fits just behind the bark of the stock. A small nail is pushed through the bark and scion with the handle of my knife. I generally tie with cord but sometimes when the bark is heavy I do not use cord. A two-pound paper sack with a hole on the earth side is placed over the graft and the sack is tied at the bottom. This serves as a "hot house" and protects the scion from rain. As soon as leaves appear on the scion, the sack is removed and all the new sprouts are broken off below the graft. I put only one scion on each graft. I use Beck's cold wax. It is easy to thin with water and I just flatten a stick for my brush. I never wax the bud but wax scion well on top.

I cannot give an accurate count of my grafting success but estimate that 75 percent of my grafts live. Rather than keep records I use that time to graft more trees. I am not an experimenter--I simply like to have grafted nut trees. My own trees are scattered over a two-mile area. I have grafted trees in Toledo and Grand Rapids. Every Sunday I attend church, then in the afternoon I graft trees. My aim is to try all the promising trees and select the best and weed out the poor ones. I am saving only the trees that bear nuts every year.

In 1947, I grafted the Ohio 1946 prize winning black walnuts. I achieved survival on all except Nos. 5 and 8. The scionwood of these two was in poor condition and I did not think they would live. I also have No. 54 which looks promising to me. I am looking forward to other contests in Ohio and elsewhere so that we can uncover some more superior black walnuts.

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President Davidson: Thank you, Mr. Shessler.

Mr. Slate, will you say a word to us on grafting? That's right along the same line.

Grafting Walnuts in the Greenhouse

GEORGE L. SLATE, State Experiment Station, Geneva, N. Y.

Walnuts have been grafted in pots in the greenhouse at the Experiment Station at Geneva, N. Y. for a dozen years or more and the practice is successful and very useful. This method was adopted for two reasons. First: Under field conditions results are often uncertain, owing to the vagaries of the weather or neglect at a critical time. The inexpertness of the operator made it desirable that the work be done under as favorable conditions as possible, with the hope that a favorable environment might overcome in part the lack of skill. Second: The work can be done in March before the field work begins, whereas field grafting in May would often not get done owing to the pressure of other work at that time. This method is not original with the writer, but is similar to the method used at the East Malling Research Station in England and described by Witt in 1928 [1].

The rootstocks, two year old black walnut seedlings raised from nuts planted in the nursery, are dug in the fall, stored in the nursery cellar until late February or early March, at which time they are potted in six or eight inch pots, depending upon the size of the rootstocks. The roots are cut back so that the plant will fit in the pot. At this time the tops are cut off, leaving the stem about 8 inches high. The pots are placed in a warm house, watered as needed, and in about 10 days the buds begin to break.

The Jones modified cleft graft is used. The stub is cut off at grafting time and the cleft is made by cutting, not splitting, the stock with a large grafting knife. The scion is tied in place with nursery tape, half-inch size, with a short wick leading out of the cleft. The scion is painted with grafting wax.

+Care of the Grafted Plant+

The pot is set in a propagating frame about 18 inches deep, with bottom heat, and covered with glass, plus lath or cloth shade. An inch of peat in the bottom of the frame is desirable, to hold moisture and maintain high humidity. The temperature of the frame is kept in the eighties, but is not allowed to go above 90°F. Under these conditions of warmth and high humidity, growth activity is rapid and in about two weeks the buds break, although, some may not start for a month. This spring adventitious buds developed on several scions. Many suckers arise from below the graft, and these are rubbed off two or three times a week. As soon as the shoots from the scion are two or three inches long the plants may be removed to a cooler house, where there is less danger of overheating on hot spring days. Later, they go to the cold frame for hardening off, and when danger of frost is over after May 21st, they are set in the nursery for two years. First year growth is not over eight or ten inches, but the second year the plants grow to three or four feet or even more in a favorable season.

The percentage of grafts starting depends largely on the scion wood. Wood cut from vigorous young trees which is grafted the same day will give a 90 percent stand or better, but wood from other sources varies according, to the age and vigor of the tree from which it is cut and the percentage of success may be much less.

This method is useful for small scale operations where a greenhouse is available and it is desirable to do the grafting before outside work interferes with it. For one not skilled in nut tree grafting success is probably more certain than with nursery grafting.

+Literature Cited+

1 Witt, A. W. The vegetative propagation of walnuts. Ann. Rpt. of the East Malling Research Station 14th and 15th Yrs. 1926-1927 II Supplement pp. 60-64.

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President Davidson: There are plenty of us who don't know much about grafting, and I did want you to hear Mr. Slate's method. It is certainly worth trying and would come at a pleasant time of the year, would be easy to do, and any of us could try it out.

We now should like to hear from Mr. Clarke on Nut Investigations at Pennsylvania State College.

Nut Investigations at the Pennsylvania State College

WILLIAM S. CLARKE, JR., State College, Pennsylvania

Our present work in nut growing at the Pennsylvania State College was begun in 1946. Some work had been started many years ago, and a small number of trees were planted, mostly black walnut; but a site was selected which proved to be very cold and frosty, and most of the trees soon died. Further work had been planned at a later date, but the depression and lack of labor and land prevented us from getting under way then.

When the present project in nut growing was approved, the country was just beginning to recover from the recent war, and materials of most kinds, including nut trees, were very difficult to obtain. Therefore, in order to learn as much as possible about nut trees, we started at the beginning, with the seed. About two bushels of hulled black walnuts were collected from fence-row trees; some were planted out in the ground that autumn, and some were placed in soil in a box and kept over winter on the outdoor porch of the packing house. Some hickory and pecan nuts were bought and also stored in a similar box. The only nuts which grew were those planted out in the ground. They gave us a good germination, while not a single nut stored in the boxes grew.

At the present time we have about 200 black walnut seedlings in the nursery. When they are a year or two older, they will be grafted to several of the named varieties of black walnuts, and those that take will be planted out in a nut orchard. These seedling trees were transplanted after one year's growth. About four or five times as much of the walnut plant was underground in the root as grew above ground where we could see it.