Chapter XII: Section X: Amendments to By-Laws (5)

Dr. Crane: No, I am talking about Chinese chestnuts. We didn't get in any Chinese chestnuts until 1906. We have this problem of incompatibility or graft union trouble, in apples, but do you hear anybody hollering about it? We have it in peaches, plums and cherries. One of the most important diseases they have out in the Pacific Northwest and California on Persian walnuts, is what is called "black line disease." We mustn't get excited about graft union failure. That has been used, in my opinion, by a lot of people, to discourage the propagating of grafted chestnuts. There are thousands of people in the United States who are spending good money for seedling trees, and some of them are going to get stung. We in the Northern Nut Growers Association are going to have this thing backfire on us, just as true as I tell you. I know there are some nurserymen today that are planting unknown chestnut seeds, and they are selling the trees as Chinese chestnut. They are planting seed out of mixed orchards, too, that have _C. seguinii_ and _C. henryi_ and _C. crenata_ trees in them. The _C. crenata_ Japanese has been introduced in the United States for over 70 years and it has never made the grade.

You know, there has been many a thing that has been promoted in the United States--big for a few days and then she backfired, and then it took the industry 50 or a hundred years to recover. You can sell people gold bricks once, but you can't sell them gold bricks _all_ the time!

Mr. McCollum: Last year after Mr. Hemming's speech--you know, he is the nurseryman who sells seedlings over on the Eastern Shore--I asked him if he had been selling those long enough to have heard from customers. "Yes," he said he had, "all satisfied." Now, I don't know anything about that.

Dr. Moss: I am not an expert. They say an expert is someone who, the more he studies, knows less about practically nothing at all. That's a good deal my shape. I planted before the war Chinese seed in Kentucky and a good many of those put on burs in the nursery row. I gave them away in the community. Out of the whole bunch, some of them 20 feet tall, I know of one outstanding nut in that bunch and it's off by itself, apparently a self-pollinizer[16], and puts out a crop of good nuts.

Dr. Cross: I should like to ask Dr. Crane if it would not be possible to investigate the situation in China rather than wait to work this out. Certainly, the Chinese have sufficient knowledge of grafting and propagation to have been working on this long ago, and since these came from there, let's look into that phase of it.

Dr. Crane: I did investigate the situation in China when I was there. Unfortunately in China, although it is one of our oldest countries and longest civilizations, they don't do much grafting. They grow their trees from seed, but they have certain seed trees that they select their seed from, and within a community, within a valley, you will have a certain type of chestnut. They call them varieties. They are not varieties. That's the situation. Most all of them are different, but they have accomplished the fixing of certain characteristics.

Now, in South China the nuts are larger in size, they are stronger growing trees than they are in the North. I think that we will find that that's the situation in this country. The Chinese chestnut is one that does have a high heat requirement, just like pecan, and grown under conditions where they have high heat they are bigger in size and make more growth and probably they come into bearing sooner.

But I didn't see anything grafted in China, and I was all over the country from the most northern parts to the most southern parts where chestnuts are produced. I could make a lot of observations myself, but I had to talk through interpreters, and sometimes you couldn't tell what the interpreter meant. But as near as I could tell, they were all seedlings. When he would tell me there was such-and-such a variety, I would ask him what it meant in English. He didn't know. When I found how they were propagated I found they planted the seed. When I found where they got the seed it was from a certain seed tree.

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.

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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.

Elmer Myers is a beautiful thin shelled nut, but so far a little shy in bearing. I believe this can be corrected if I can find another walnut that will shed pollen late enough to catch the Myers pistils. Homeland may be the one to do it. I have set some grafts of it with the Myers to see.

Carpathian D, and a variety of unknown origin from Haywood County are the only Persian walnuts I have fruited. This tree of unknown origin grows alone, is at least 50 years old, is three feet in diameter, has a spread of 40 feet, and is about the same in height. Some years it produces a heavy crop, others, nothing. To my knowledge, it has received no care in the past 20 years.

My 18 Carpathians are all growing with varying vigor and resistance to leaf spot. None has shown winter injury.

Of all the heartnuts, Rhodes is my favorite. The nut does not appear to be as large as some, but the kernel is just as heavy, due to its compact shape which causes it to fall out when the nut is cracked. It is self-pollenizing and also a good pollenizer for all my other varieties, shedding pollen over a long period of time, although it is the latest of all in producing its pistils. It grows vigorously on black walnut stock.

Rush seems to be the best filbert for this section. Its catkins are usually hardy here.

Chestnut trees, like gray ghosts, still reach their naked arms high on many West Tennessee hillsides, and occasionally one finds a farmer splitting posts from their remains, for chestnut is an enduring wood. A few of these tenacious individuals are still sending up sprouts that may reach considerable size before they are again struck down.

I have had no serious trouble with blight in any of the named chestnut varieties, either Chinese or Japanese. I have lost some trees by its entrance into the seedling stock, but not many. My greatest headache has been sun-scald and winter killing, or to be more exact, "early spring" killing.

One of the juvenile characteristics of oriental chestnuts is the retention of their leaves all winter. They also grow in a rather sprangling way. This is a protective mechanism, and when we prune them to an upright form, or graft, this wood having lost its juvenile characteristics, we are inviting trouble unless we protect the trunk in some other way. I prefer to use a paper wrap as described under Pecans, as it is quickly done and is inexpensive. This also gives protection to immature callus cells at bud or graft union.

Of the older Chinese chestnut varieties in my hands, Hobson has excelled, with large chestnuts (34 to the pound in 1948.) Zimmerman also produces a good nut. Colossal (Hybrid) is very productive and produces the largest nuts of any chestnut that I have seen grown in Tennessee, but the quality of the raw nut is not equal to Hobson. It refuses to grow on Chinese stock, but thrives on Japanese. It is pollen sterile. I have several newer varieties under observation and although they are growing vigorously I have not had time to form an opinion on them.

* * * * *

President Davidson: The Reverend Bernard Taylor of Alpine, Tennessee, will next read a paper on The Marketing of Black Walnuts as a Community Project. Mr. Taylor.

Marketing Black Walnuts as a Community Project

THE REV. BERNARD TAYLOR, Alpine, Tennessee

The Rev. Mr. Taylor: I suppose that every community where black walnuts grow wild has a marketing of some kind, some kind of a plan of marketing, maybe just what every boy or every man who has some spare time or some of the womenfolks may do to make something out of the walnuts that are lying around.

In the community of Alpine, which is in Overton County, people used to go out on the ridge with wagons and bring home wagonloads of walnuts, and they would sell them either in the shell or they would crack them and sell them in pretty poor condition, however they could sell them. When we first began selling walnut kernels in Alpine we got 19 cents a pound for the kernels, and that was more than they were worth, I believe, because they were dirty, greasy, and they had mildew gobs in the bunches of kernels. So I don't know how the rolling stores that came around that way could make anything out of them trading them in at that price.

Then we began to study the Government bulletins on how to produce good walnut kernels, and there is a good bulletin on that; all of you are acquainted with it, probably. When we began to harvest those nuts and hull them as quickly as we could and wash them and dry them out thoroughly and then crack them before they got too dry, we organized what was called the Walnut Club. This Walnut Club mostly was composed of some of the women of the community who lived up in one little cove where the limestone outcroppings seem to favor the walnut and the air drainage or whatever it was seemed to favor the crop yields rather regularly. We don't have an every-year good walnut crop.

Well, these women got finally so that they could get 35 cents a pound for their walnut kernels, then 45 cents a pound. Then we found a good friend in Pennsylvania who would take those kernels, all we could send her, and put them up in little pound packages and sell them for whatever she could get and send us all the money. That's altogether contrary to Hoyle I guess.

You merchants, if there are some of you here, who are dealers in walnut kernels know that our people were just getting spoiled. Anytime now that a merchant says, "I will give you such-and-such a price for the walnuts and then I will sell them for such-and-such a price," he looks to them like a robber. They want to sell them for what the people pay who eat them. That isn't quite fair, maybe, but we got $1.39 a pound last year for all the kernels we could produce, and the year before it was $1.40, I believe, and it stays about that price.

That is about the story of the community project. It is a direct contact by way of a benevolent friend between people in the mountains in Tennessee and people in Pennsylvania who say that these kernels taste better than black walnut kernels in Pennsylvania taste. I don't know whether any Pennsylvanians here agree with that or not. I think they are wonderfully mild-flavored, a good many of them very light-colored kernels. Though Mr. Chase has made some beautiful exhibits of how the color changes depending on how long a time you leave them in the hull, we still have some that stay lighter than others. Some of them have rather gray-colored kernels.

There is one of those trees that Mrs. Ledbetter has, on her husband's farm. He was about to sell that tree for a log and a stump. They come along and grub the stumps out and sell the stumps and all for veneerwood. But she wouldn't let him sell it, and over the course of the last few years they sold enough kernels more than to pay for that walnut tree and it is still going to yield a good many years, probably better and better as time goes on.

I think that possibly the community angle of this is a little bit misrepresenting. It's not the entire community, but it is a little group of the community who are interested in the wild black walnut.

Last spring we were very fortunate in having some help in grafting some of the seedlings. This Mrs. Ledbetter's husband got interested in walnuts, and he planted a whole pasture with walnuts spaced every so often, and this spring we went there with the help of God and were able to graft those to Thomas black walnuts. They were just little seedlings, so we hope to go into the named black walnuts as time goes on.

* * * * *

President Davidson: May I ask, Mr. Taylor, the people, of course, now comply with the Government regulations on pasteurization and so on?

Mr. Taylor: Never heard of it. You will have to tell me about that after a while, if you will, please.

President Davidson: Mr. Shadow, the County Agent of Decatur, Meigs County, Tennessee, will tell his experiences with tree crops in that county.

Experiences with Tree Crops in Meigs County, Tennessee

W. A. SHADOW, Meigs County Agent, Decatur, Tennessee

Mr. Shadow: Mr. Chairman and members of the Nut Growers Association: As President Davidson announced, I am an agricultural agent. About twelve years ago I thought it would be good to have a hobby, and since I was born and reared in the nursery world propagating fruit trees and ornamentals, and due to the fact that John Hershey came by one day and talked to me about the tree crops in the Tennessee Valley, it struck me just right, and I have made that my hobby.

You know, every man who has a job gets fed up on his job and needs to get out and play with himself, or something else, to forget his troubles. So I find in propagating nut trees, top-working them, if you will, top-working trees where I find them to named varieties, is very interesting to me.

John Hershey taught me the technique of grafting nut trees. I had grafted and budded in all kinds of ornamentals and fruits, but I needed training in nut trees. So in the spring of 1935, I guess, I grafted about a hundred Thomas black walnut on trees where I found them in the woodland. At the same time I grafted maybe a hundred Japanese persimmon of possibly a dozen varieties on the common native persimmon. I purchased three, four, maybe five Japanese persimmons and planted these trees in the spring of 1935. All these persimmons, maybe 60 or 70 of them, grew nicely. The Thomas grew very well, and the winter of 1939 or 1940, I don't recall just which, was rather severe. We had below-zero weather, and all of my persimmons were killed--I thought. The next year I found a persimmon tree up in the woods with maybe a peck of great big nice persimmons and later I found that that was a Fuyugaki persimmon. All the rest of mine were winter killed. Those that I purchased were winter killed the first year. I don't know why. I grafted the persimmon about 5 feet high. Those that were grafted at the ground I noticed winter killed the first year, and these that are grafted up about shoulder high seemed to live three or four years before they winter killed, and the one variety that survived as Mr. Kline and Mr. Chase, or someone, has told, is Fuyugaki, I believe. I have a Tamopan persimmon, a great big, nice persimmon about so big, but bitter as the dickens, and about the only thing I think it is good for is to look at. It is pretty. But the Fuyugaki is never bitter. It is very tasty even partially green, and as it ripens my lady thinks it is very good, and I think it is good, myself.

I have about two or three varieties of mulberries. I got them from Glen St. Mary Nurseries in Florida. They make awfully good pig feed and bird feed, and I don't mind eating them myself.

There are some honeylocust, Millwood and Calhoun. I purchased several seedlings of thornless honeylocust from some northwestern nursery and grafted them to Millwood and Calhoun. I also have four trees that are ten years old and they have never borne. Last year there was one tree of that hundred that bore heavily, and the rest of them are barren. It must be lack of pollenization, or something. I am not getting fruit from my honeylocust.

Someone asked me what I am going to do with all this stuff, and I said, "Well, the squirrels and I will have lots of fun anyhow, and the cows will eat the honeylocust if they ever bear."

I have two pecan trees that are bearing nicely. One is a Posey and the other is a Greenriver, bearing very nicely. They are about ten years old. I have some Schley and Delmas and Mahan, and they are not bearing. I don't know why. We are out of the realm of the southern pecan and too far south for the northern pecan, I am afraid.

My Persian walnut, heartnut and Japanese walnut think it is spring too quick, and every year they burst out and grow about so long, and then they fall down and die from freezing, and then they grow out, and this time of the year you look at them and you say, "That's a beautiful tree," But they freeze just enough to get the fruit each year.

Mr. McDaniel came by last spring a year ago and left with me a little scion of a Carpathian walnut, the Bayer selection. I wasn't present, but he left it with my lady and suggested to my lady that I would know what to do with it. I put it on a common black walnut grafted about so high, and it is ten feet high now growing nicely, but this spring I noticed that it, too, thought the spring was here before it was here. I don't know how it is going to bear. I may have to take it out on top of the hill and re-graft it on a high place where it has more air drainage.

Of the Chinese chestnut, I planted about a hundred, but I planted them in a cut-over woodland that was full of native chestnut sprouts. You know how the chestnut sprouts will do. They grow up and blight out and die down, and another sprout comes from the stump. They have been doing that for 30 years over in my part of the country. I planted these chestnuts purposely in that grove where there was lots of blight. Out of that hundred I have eight trees that are alive. The rest of them have died from blight. They are bearing very nicely, but I haven't learned how to care for those fruits so that they are good a long period of time. Someone just told me that you had someone on the program this morning who would tell us that. It is a very interesting subject for me.

And the Thomas walnut is a nice black walnut. The trees are a little bit peculiar about their bearing; sometimes they bear heavily and again they forget to bear. The Stabler doesn't bear at all for me. I just know they are Stablers because someone told me so. I have them labeled. I have Creitz black walnut. I got five from TVA four or five years ago, and they just literally bear themselves to death. They're about so high and bear every year, very nice nuts. I will have to pull the walnuts off long enough to make them grow up and make real trees. I think they are going to be all right.

Mr. Chairman, I am not an expert. I use my hobby to keep from bothering about the troubles that I have with other things, and when I get mad at a neighbor I go to playing on my trees, and it gets me well. I recommend it as a very soothing hobby.

Now, some day we will make a business out of tree crops when we in Tennessee get the bugs out of it and get them so we will have the right varieties to produce. I am not satisfied with the Thomas. Someone suggested it was a wonderful nut. I am not satisfied with it. We need a better walnut than the Thomas. But it's the best I have.

There is a native walnut I found in the valley near Watts Bar Dam. I named it Pineland. It is just a seedling. It is a most wonderful nut if it wasn't for its hard shell. It's hard as the dickens. It is a wonderful bearer, has borne every year for nine years. It happens to be in unusually good soil. But I have grafted a few up away from the river, and the grafted trees are bearing nicely. The trouble is it is hard, but it is a wonderful good kernel and it is a big nut.

Groups like this working with tree crops and nuts over a period of time will develop the right varieties, and if we can get some youngsters interested--and I am in my county getting some youngsters interested in grafting--and tell them not to expect too much but get a whole lot of satisfaction out of the fun of producing something, I think this will be the beginning. Or rather, you have been going a long time. This is a means of progress in tree crops that I am well pleased to take a part in. Mr. Chairman, I think that's about all that I have.

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President Davidson: I know we all wish we had more county agents like that, interested in trees and interested in young folks. Those two things should go together. I wish you would just sort of propagate that idea when you meet other county agents, won't you, Mr. Shadow?

Now, then, Mr. Frye of Pleasant Dale, West Virginia, will tell us something about Nut Hobbying in Eastern West Virginia.

Nut Hobbying in Eastern West Virginia

WILBERT M. FRYE, Pleasant Dale, West Virginia

Mr. Frye: After hearing such wonderful speeches as we have had, with your reading, Mr. McDaniel, I wish I could be all of us, but as it is, I am just myself. I don't know how many know where Pleasant Dale is, but anyhow, you know where Washington, D. C. is; I live just along U. S. 50 and my section is 103 miles west of Washington, D. C. That will locate where we are.

This section of the country is composed of a lot of long ridges with steep hills, narrow valleys, some of them very fertile. These valleys form bases where you will get the draft off these hills down into the valleys. You must keep all the fruit and most of the nut trees out of those places, or you have these frost spots that I have been telling some of you about.

As far back as people can remember that country has been covered with all kinds of nuts except the European (Persian or "English") walnuts, and the early people coming in there used these nuts for food, and the chestnut was their main one. Whenever a person clearing the land found a nice tree he would save it. Then he would show much pride in having a good tree, and it kept on going until there became a rivalry as to who had the best chestnut tree. Some had an orchard of them.

When the blight hit the country I had an orchard of chestnut trees. When I saw the first blight in the top of a tree I didn't like the looks. I kept noticing that. It kept on coming down the tree, and it killed the base. The total result was everybody lost their hobby trees, and then soon they changed to something else.

Now, when the blight took the chestnut out of the country the people began to pride themselves on the walnut, who had the best walnut, who had the best shagbark in the country.

Some distance from where I am is a two-acre grove, a wonderful grove of our larger nuts. Some places it is called kingnut and some places they call it under the name of this big one in the show room, shellbark. Anyhow, there were two acres there and real moist meadows, and every once in a while the frost would kill those nuts, and the next year they would have a wonderful crop. So the climate determines whether we have an annual crop or an intermittent crop on these trees.

Then I always liked to mess around with hobbies with nature. I became interested, got to wondering who did have the best of the best. Then I began to go out and visit all of these farms and ask them for a certain number of the best, and I began to send them around to Mr. Reed and Mr. Zarger and other people to take their word on it. And, of course, I have located some that cracked very well. But every once in a while somebody tells me they have got a better one yet, and the other day I ran across a fellow a hundred miles away--he happened to hear about me, and I have a neighbor who knows him--who has a black walnut that looks like a Persian walnut. So you see, I have a trip of a hundred miles to make to see what he's got. I wrote to him just before I left. I wrote to him to send me at least 20 of those nuts, and just as soon as this fellow sends me the nuts I would come up and see him and later on would try to get some grafting wood and send down to Mr. Zarger of the TVA group.

My job is not to keep them to myself but to put out the best. So we have those different nuts, and now it is time to consolidate the best in what we have and get them in the hands of the nut growers groups and those who will put them out and really make use of them. But first we want to see these best trees all over the country. Some of them are not as good for timber as the others, but I like to incorporate the timber with the nut production.

We talked about the black walnut earlier today. The speaker was not saying much about flavor. That's one thing we want to do in all of our nut work, get as good a flavor as we can. So why not get the best and go putting it out to give it to everybody. Why keep anything within ourselves? That's the main thing we can do.

A brother was talking a while ago about this nut job, a community nut job. Now, two years ago--I will have to use my dad, who is 82 years old, as a little reference--my dad cracked 83 pounds of black walnuts from just the best of them, you might say. Sold them at a price of $1.49 a pound. So that wasn't bad, was it? I thought that was right good.

Last year we didn't have a nut in there because we had a freeze on the 31st of May of around 26 deg. to 28 deg., depending on where you were and the location. But then in the fall on the 23rd of September we had another drop just when everything was in full growth, due to a dry spell and then a rain. But in the fall on the 23rd of September we had a drop down to 20, so that was what happened to all the remaining nuts in that country. They were just frozen like black mummies.

I had what they call the Texas Thinshell black walnut. I have one tree that is about eight or nine feet high, maybe ten feet high, had 45 nuts on it, nice big ones, and they just looked like mummies, and it made me heartsick, of course. I went out there and looked at the things, and they fell off the tree. I thought, "Well, I might just as well experiment. I will dig me a little trench here along the garden, I will put these in and see what happens." To my surprise 20 of them came up after being frozen. So that might be a question: Will things sprout or germinate without reaching maturity?[17] I don't know how much maturity they had. They certainly weren't in full growth when they were frozen. That's one thing we want to see.

My main aim is just to grow things, for hobby purposes and see just what will grow. Last year we had such a hectic year from that late spring freeze and early fall freeze it discouraged me here where I am, in this frost pocket at an elevation of 1,050 feet. And I said, "Now, on the hill about 4 miles away and 300 feet higher they have a wonderful place for peaches." I have a friend who lives up there, and he has so many peach trees missing in his old orchard. I said, "How about setting out some nut trees in your peach orchard?" Ho said, "Go to it." I set out a nut tree wherever there is a peach tree out. So that gave me a chance to see what they would do. Last spring I started that too late, but I set out 45 or 50 trees, filberts, Persian walnuts, pecans, chestnuts and persimmons, and I will just see what they will do.