you think it is necessary put in a cap in the bottom and one in the top.
MR. POMEROY: If you have a misfire and the men don't like to monkey
around it, and neither do you, just step off a few inches and stick in
another one and let her go. Will that fix the stick that didn't go off?
MR. EVANS: That is the safest way.
MR. HARGIS: In tamping say you have a hole in a rock four feet. I have
had men tell me to pour the hole full of water. Is that right?
MR. EVANS: That is the best method known.
In tree planting you will always have to use your own judgment. Go down
four or five or six feet to learn the character of the soil, tamp the
cartridge well and as fuse is not expensive, always use plenty of it.
THE PRESIDENT: Any further discussion of this, or any further questions
on the use of dynamite?
MR. DOAN: Mr. President, I would like to mention a method I found
helpful. That is to make two holes in the cartridge, one diagonally
down from one side, thrusting the fuse bearing the cap through that, and
then making a hole diagonally in the other side and thrusting the cap in
it.
MR. EVANS: We do not advocate using that method because dynamite will
become ignited from the fuse and will burn. To be frank with you that is
the method we use, but the company does not approve of it and we should
not use it. You are liable to have a misfire. In warm weather there is
no danger but in cold weather don't use it. The best method is to bore
right in at an angle of forty-five degrees.
MR. POTTER: Do you advise us to use dynamite?
MR. EVANS: Yes, we have men making a business of it.
MR. POTTER: To be frank with you I don't like to use it.
MR. EVANS: Dynamite is not dangerous. It is the caps, though they look
safe. It is that white stuff in the dynamite cap. There is where the
danger is.
THE PRESIDENT: We will stand adjourned until 1 o'clock.
* * * * *
Re-convened at 1 P. M.
THE PRESIDENT: I will ask W. C. Reed to state something of his program
for Saturday so the members may know about it.
W. C. REED: Our plans for Saturday morning are that we are leaving
Evansville at 7:30, arriving in Vincennes at 9:30; several automobiles
will be in waiting there to take all the party out to the nurseries and
get back to the station for the 2 o'clock train going north to Oaktown,
where there will be automobiles in waiting to take us out to see the
original Busseron and Indiana trees, coming back to Oaktown in time for
the 6:40 train south, arriving in Vincennes at 7:07, or the train north
out of Oaktown to Terre Haute, to connect for Pittsburgh over the
Pennsylvania Lines or Big Four if anyone wants to go that way. We would
like to have everyone go with us Saturday, if possible, and would also
like to know sometime this afternoon before we adjourn how many are
going, so I can notify them tonight how many automobiles there will be
needed at each point.
THE PRESIDENT: That is rather an important visit for the members to make
for two or three reasons. Those of you who haven't had the opportunity
of seeing the pecan propagated in Mr. McCoy's nursery will get a chance
to see Mr. Reed's nursery; and you will get to see the parent trees of
two good northern Varieties. We know very much depends on the location
of the original parent tree, notwithstanding it is sometimes said it is
the location of the nursery that determines the hardiness. We know that
has nothing to do with it. You cannot, by putting a tree in a nursery
for six months, change its nature. If you take this trip Saturday, you
will have a chance to see the Busseron and the Indiana.
MR. REED: We will also visit the Niblack tree if we have time.
THE PRESIDENT: I would suggest that all go who can. I want also to urge
all of you to make the trip tomorrow and see the big seedling pecan
trees bearing nuts hanging almost to the ground. You cannot always see
that because usually they are so tall. I also want to call your
attention to the exhibits in the other room. Mr. Wilkinson has a very
fine collection in there. Col. Sober has some very fine exhibits of
chestnuts, both of burrs and nuts, and Mr. W. C. Reed has a very fine
collection and possibly there are many others I should mention. You
ought to examine all of them, because the only way of drawing correct
conclusions about these things comes from careful study, and it cannot
be done hastily. The next on the program this afternoon will be Mr.
McCoy's talk.
MR. MCCOY: I have no set speech to make I thought maybe there were some
things I might say to be a help to some of you; some things that would
have been lots of help to me a year or two ago from some one, because
nut trees are more difficult than any other nursery stock to propagate,
and for another reason it is more difficult in the North than in the
South. Mr. Paul White and Mr. Ford Wilkinson have both worked in the
North and in the South, and after coming back home these boys say that
anybody can propagate pecans in the South, but with us it is different.
We have kept at it, though, and our president has been our good friend
and has always helped us out. There have been three of us incessantly at
the work. Mr. Littlepage would come down home and get us together and
ginger us up, and we would go back and go to work and try again. It has
been one continuous line of failures, but every year we have learned
some things, or at least learned how not to do it. This spring we were
fortunate in having an expert from the South who came to my nursery and
stayed there until midsummer, and we saw our own work compared with his.
We all had great respect for him and he is able, too. I don't think he
had much respect for us when he got here but he had a whole lot when he
went away for he made a miserable failure like the rest of us. Mr.
Jones, you know, is an authority on grafting. He is the man that
introduced it to the nut world, at least in the East. I think it had
been tried in California before. We have tried his methods and
everything else that government experts or any other expert told us
about, and we have read all the magazines that were published from the
South to the North. Everything seemed to be a failure and finally I got
disgusted and said "We will do it to suit ourselves." After we had tried
all the hard ways in Christendom I think we have at last found an easy
way to do it. Like everything else it is easy when you know how. I
believe it is a fact--and I am saying nothing but what I believe--I
don't believe you will ever successfully graft pecan trees in the North,
unless you equalize your sap flow by pruning your roots. I tried it and
failed. It is possible you may be able to side graft under most
favorable conditions. You may make a side graft take if you leave the
top on to take care of the extra sap flow. You take off the top of a
pecan tree, or any other nut tree in this country, and you ruin your
root system because your sap comes with such vengeance--and it comes!
One day there is no show of sap and the next day it comes with
vengeance. Differences in the soil, of course, makes some difference. At
Mr. Littlepage's place, Paul had the sap a week before I did and Mr.
Wilkinson had it four days before. A great many of our top works are
going to the bad because we ruined the root system when we cut the tree.
And I want to say it again, I don't believe we can make a success of it
in the North. You may do it in Oregon where you have a distributed sap
flow. The Oregon fellows say you can't bud, because they don't know how.
They say the only way you can produce trees is to graft. That may be
true out there but you can't graft in Indiana, I know, especially on my
place. Of course the soil of each particular farm has something to do
with it. To illustrate my point, the first year I was in the state of
Wisconsin, on the 20th of June, I was out in the country and saw a man
setting tobacco. I knew him and I said, "Won't that tobacco get frost
bit?" and he said, "I reckon not. It might but it never did." I thought
it would, but I went that way in two weeks again and I changed my mind.
I had been used to seeing tobacco growing in the Ohio valley where it
does its growing in the latter part of the season. In the South the sap
flow is much better distributed than it is in the North.
Now, then, I have brought a board along with these young trees stuck in
it, because I thought some of the members would like to see a
demonstration. The tools I have here are not adequate, hardly, for the
job. For a tree that size we take a saw to it.
(Here Mr. McCoy makes a demonstration of cleft grafting.)
MR. POTTER: Would you have a scion as long as that in actual work?
MR. MCCOY: Many of them are, but it would be better smaller, probably.
That is a matter I don't think there is much to, whether the scion has
one bud or ten. I think three is perhaps about right.
MR. POTTER: They come together right there?
MR. MCCOY: Exactly on the front side. Now you understand this grafting
is done when the sap is flowing, or about the time the sap flow begins.
Usually at our latitude here you will commence grafting anywhere from
the 6th of April to about that time in May. Of course when you are
cutting trees at that time you have got an immense flow of sap. Mr.
Jones tried this method without drainage, that is the way they do out in
Louisiana, but he only got ten per cent to stick, so we had to work out
a drainage for ourselves. Take a piece of heavy wrapping paper, rather
good quality such as you can get at any paper store, and put it right
over your graft, and a little bit below the cut on your stock. Then
simply take a piece of raffia and wrap. Then make the ordinary tie that
anyone knows how to make with the cotton or twine, or sometimes with the
raffia, and you have the drainage of this paper. The tie, of course, is
simply to re-enforce the strain on the graft and hold it. Then you apply
the grafting wax. The one we use is three of resin, one of beeswax, and
lampblack and a little bit of linseed oil. Cover up the graft entirely,
except don't cover over the lower end of this paper because there is the
drainage where the sap flows out. Then you put an ordinary paper sack
right over it, and leave it on for about three weeks.
A MEMBER: You don't tie the paper below the raffia?
MR. MCCOY: That does not make any difference.
A MEMBER: At what time do you cut a hole in the bag to give it air, or
do you do that?
MR. MCCOY: Not for two or three weeks.
(Mr. McCoy now gives a demonstration in budding.)
We will suppose this is a seedling and I want to bud it. I place my
budder on like that. Now I have got my shield up. Now I lay my budder on
the stock something like that.
MR. SMITH: Why not wrap over the bud?
Mr. MCCOY: Because it will injure it. It is essential to cover all the
cut surface you can. Make it waterproof at the top, and have it open at
the bottom.
MR. POTTER: How long does that stay on the bud?
MR. MCCOY: I don't know as that makes any difference unless you want to
force the bud.
MR. MCELDERRY: When do you take that off?
MR. MCCOY: I don't know as that makes any difference. I have thousands
of them that have been on five or six weeks. I take it off when action
begins. It varies, it may be two weeks and it may be six and it might be
six months. If you have maximum budding conditions generally the tree
itself will tell the story. We frequently take it off and have to
rewrap.
MR. W. C. REED: Would ten days be too quick?
MR. MCCOY: In most cases, yes.
MR. REED: Fruit trees is two weeks, but pecan trees are not quite as
quick?
MR. MCCOY: Pecan trees will come through the rye about as quick as a
peach tree.
MR. REED: I am talking about cherry trees.
MR. MCCOY: I think about twenty or twenty-five days is about right. You
know as well as I do that cases are not all alike, and you have to know
when to unwrap.
PROFESSOR CLOSE: How can you tell this if the bud is covered up?
MR. MCCOY: You can tell easy enough if the bud is alive, just like
anything else.
MR. MOSELY: You say you can't graft pecan trees here?
MR. MCCOY: I don't think so.
MR. WEBBER: What do you graft?
MR. POTTER: And what will you do about the nut trees?
MR. MCCOY: I will bud.
MR. WEBBER: What value is the grafting to us?
MR. MCCOY: You may be able to graft.
MR. W. C. REED: We _can_ graft.
MR. MCCOY: Maybe you can, but I can't.
I don't think root grafting is a success, although we have some fine
trees that are root grafted. I don't know what it is but there is
something wrong; some of them are all right, to be sure but I don't find
it a general success. Of the two methods, grafting and budding, I will
bud.
MR. HARGIS: Mr. McCoy, I have a number of seedling pecan trees in good
healthy condition and I want to transform them into good bearing trees.
What shall I do?
MR. MCCOY: Mr. Littlepage will cover that.
THE PRESIDENT: I don't know about that, whether I can or not, but that
will come later. There is one thing that ought to be covered, or
demonstrated here, and that is the method of working the hickory and the
pecan by the slip bark method. I think the slip bark method in the
hickory and pecan is a method that everybody ought to know, and also
this ought to be used with the walnut tree. Some of the walnuts ought to
be top worked to English walnuts in the North. And it's the same way
with the hickory through this section. There are thousands and tens of
thousands that ought to be top worked to fine shagbarks, and I am going
to call on Mr. White who is the most successful man in this topwork
method I have ever seen. I top worked twenty-six this spring, and got
twenty-three to grow; he did twenty-two and made twenty-one grow, so
that record beats mine. I will say also to those of you who are
interested, get a copy of Mr. Olcott's _Nut Journal_ and you will see a
lot of good cuts showing the results of top working. To those of you who
do not know Mr. White I will say that he is associated with me in some
tree work and I think he is perhaps one of the most successful top
workers I have ever seen. Paul, you will now give us your demonstration.
(Paul White now gives demonstration of top working.)
MR. RIEHL: I would like to say a few things right here, I don't want to
be thought altogether idle. I live in Illinois, your neighboring state.
I have learned lots of good things here and I want to give a little. I
have been experimenting in the nut business for some time; I have
studied propagation and there is one point I think will be new to you. I
had difficulty in propagating hickories and pecans until I got the
thought of hermetically sealing the scion. I first used gum shellac, but
later I found that by covering the scion with grafting wax completely it
serves the same purpose as the paper. It takes the place of all that
wrapping, except right at the wound, and does away with the sacks. I
have tried them and I much prefer covering with grafting wax. Your buds
will come right through the wax, and you don't have to bother about
taking off the sacks, and there is no danger of leaving the sacks on too
long.
THE PRESIDENT: That is a very good suggestion, Mr. Riehl. There might be
some discussion of that. It occurs to me that with that method it is
very essential you have the right kind of grafting wax, otherwise it
might injure your bark. Are there any suggestions or questions before we
finish the grafting demonstration?
MR. RIEHL: I wish to emphasize the fact that the wax must not be too
hot.
THE PRESIDENT: What is your formula, Mr. Riehl?
MR. RIEHL: Four of resin, two of beeswax and one of linseed oil.
THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further questions?
MR. DORR: Suppose I wanted to get a certain variety of tree by grafting.
For instance if I couldn't buy the white Heath Cling peach then my only
resource would be to bud on another tree. But suppose I struck a nursery
where I could get good seedlings of this tree. Wouldn't a natural tree
be preferable to the budded one?
THE PRESIDENT: There are no true seedlings, so far as I know.
MR. DORR: Do you mean there are none at all true to seed?
THE PRESIDENT: No, nut trees do not come true to variety. In other
words, Mr. Dorr, I might put it this way. In the big Green River orchard
over here there are some of the very best pecan trees, but those of us
who have been observing them for years have found it is only through
propagation we can get a Green River and a Major. It would be a failure
to get the nuts and plant them and hope to get the varieties that exist
there, just as it would to plant some nut that grows a hundred miles
away, because the pollen up and down the river would mix in these
varieties. It is the same way with the walnut, when you undertake to
plant an English walnut and get it true to the seed, you are going to
have a failure. If you plant a Rush walnut you may get a nut that
resembles it but there is no probability of its being a true Rush
walnut. That is why we have these discussions of budding and grafting.
We should be glad if seedlings would come true but they do not. I will
show you tomorrow, at Enterprise, the great variety of seedling pecans,
and I want you to look them over well.
PROFESSOR SMITH: May I answer his question? I think he asked, which is
better the tree from the nursery, the natural tree, or a grafted tree?
THE PRESIDENT: If he did, I didn't understand.
PROFESSOR SMITH: That was the question, and I will say he can't find a
Heath Cling, unless it is top worked.
MR. DORR: Some farmers who have tried a great many experiments hold to
this theory: If you select the seed properly you can produce fruit as
good as the nurseries produce it. The things the schools teach don't
coincide with what those practical farmers observe.
PROFESSOR SMITH: When you try to find farmers more practical than these
men here, you have got some to find.
THE PRESIDENT: The farmer who says he can do that is mistaken.
MR. DORR: He says the same thing about you. When I buy a grafted tree a
storm comes along and breaks it where it was grafted. If I can get a
perfect seedling I will have a stronger tree.
MR. MCELDERRY: The very thing he is inquiring about has cost Posey
County thousands of dollars. Men tell them they have trees that are
better than the nurserymen sell and they bite and find they are
mistaken. But they get them and pay from ten to fifteen cents more than
they would to the dealer. There is no man on earth that can keep the
Heath Cling true in that way, or any other variety on earth.
PROFESSOR CLOSE: I want to say a word. Two or three people have made the
statement here that it is absolutely impossible to propagate any peach
or other fruit true from seed. We have been doing it for years. I
believe the orchard peach will come true to the seed. With apples there
are groups that will come true to the group but not the variety.
THE PRESIDENT: I am glad to hear that statement. I have understood that
the Indian peach will come true to that group but it will not be the big
Indian peach you have planted. It is a fact that some of those groups
have a tendency to come true to the group.
PROFESSOR CLOSE: Yes, they come true to the group and so will apples.
MR. DORR: May I ask another question? What has become of some of those
beautiful, delicious seedlings in southern Indiana they had when I was a
boy?
THE PRESIDENT: The same thing that became of Washington and
Lincoln--they died.
MR. MCELDERRY: It is a boy's taste, not the peach, that makes it seem
better than the ones we have now.
MR. W. C. REED: I feel that Mr. McCoy discouraged us too much about
grafting. I think either method he used will succeed very well. The main
point is the time of the year it is done. Up to a year ago we began
grafting a few days after the first of April, and continued up to the
first of May, and our success varied from ninety per cent to nothing. We
decided there was too much sap and went to budding. The last grafting we
did gave us the only real good stand we got, that which we did from the
first to the tenth of May. We had as good results then as we did in
budding.
THE PRESIDENT: That is good, Mr. Reed. I think those facts ought to be
brought out and made a matter of a record.
MR. REED: I think it is more the time in grafting than anything else.
MR. MCCOY: Mr. Reed has a clay soil and that does not furnish the rapid
flow of sap that a warm sandy soil does.
MR. REED: You would have to begin grafting earlier.
MR. MCCOY: Yes sir.
MR. WHITE: Do you leave that cover of paper on when you coves it with
wax?
MR. REED: On part of them we did and on part of them we did not. In
grafting walnut trees this season we left some of it on.
MR. WOODS: Just a question as to the strength of that slip grafting.
Will it blow off easily?
MR. WHITE: The first year it will blow off a little bit easily. The
first year you will have to tie it.
THE PRESIDENT: Are there any further suggestions? If not the next thing
on the program will be a talk by Dr. J. Russell Smith of the University
of Pennsylvania.
PROFESSOR SMITH: Mr. Chairman, and Ladies and Gentlemen: We have to
educate the public--my good friend down by the window, I hope he will
not take my remarks personally--is a case in point. He has come in with
an argument, which the gentlemen next him says has cost his county lots
of money. I am a grower of apples, an experimenter in nuts and I raise
peaches to eat. I am planting seedling peaches and I know that when I go
on that hillside of mine I can get little red seedling peaches and plant
them and get the same kind, which have, I think, as much sugar and
flavor as any big peach two inches or two and a half in diameter. I
raise them true to the type too, but I would not think of putting out a
commercial orchard of seedling peaches. My neighbor tried it, to his
financial sorrow.
But it is surprising how this seedling error sticks. People are going to
be buying seedling trees twenty-five years hence and thinking they are
getting the best to be had. Here is an article that bears me out. Here
is an editor who has published a very glaring thing. This is No. 139,
Vol. 113 of a paper devoted primarily to ginseng. This question was
asked: "What do you know about the Pomeroy English walnut trees and
fruit?" and the editor answers: "The Pomeroy walnut trees are all right
and you will find at least nineteen out of twenty hardy. That is what I
find here and we often get it down to 20 below zero. The nuts are of
good quality. Beware of the Pomeroy trees offered by the Rochester
nurserymen. These are grafted trees. Pomeroy raises his trees on their
own roots, all of them are true seedlings, and that is why once in a
great while one turns out tender."
[Illustration: J. RUSSELL SMITH
President of the Northern Nut Growers Association]
MR. DORR: I believe I am as old as you are and have gone the same gait
exactly. I lost my job and went to farming. I was once a college
professor, too, but there are things I find now I didn't find then.
Two nurserymen come to me and sell me two Grimes Golden apples. I plant
them side by side and they do not turn out alike. Why not if they are
grafted trees? I am not knocking, you misunderstand me, I am a truth
seeker.
PROFESSOR SMITH: I believe that. We always find something we didn't buy.
My head man says they jump in. I have some very fine specimens that came
by accident, and of course we have a certain amount of bud variation. We
find variety even by propagation. The trees will vary the same as people
will but they will vary a great deal more if we get the seedlings. The
successful growth of nuts, as of any other fruit, demands the use of top
worked trees from the best known parentage. That is the way we do with
apples, peaches, pears, and cherries. Nuts will have to come in the same
class from the best known parentage. The big thing today is to find out
the best known parentage and then spread knowledge so that no editor
will be capable of fooling people as in the article I read a few minutes
ago.