largely as a matter of curiosity. My home is in Decatur, Ill. Illinois
has 56,000 square miles, 30,000 square miles of that state are, or were,
covered with hard wood timber. In Bureau County the hickory, the hazel,
the walnut and butternut grow with a great deal of vigor; less than two
blocks from me there is an ordinary sweet chestnut brought from the East
by a gentleman a great many years ago. I measured it last fall and it is
six feet nine inches in circumference, it has a spread of about sixty
feet and it is about seventy-five feet high. The neighbors told me that
they got a bushel of chestnuts every year off that one tree. I presume
if they took better care of it and gave it some fertilization they would
get more than that. I happen to be the chairman of the tree committee of
the Bird and Tree Club. The city of Decatur purchased 42 trees and
planted them in seven parks of the city of Decatur; members of the Bird
and Tree Club came to me for advice and last year I placed 114 trees for
them. They placed a number of trees with the Oberlin Conservatory of
Music, chestnut trees, and they planted them on the campus. I believe
that persons who are associated with different clubs would take up the
matter of nut growing. That means that you can interest the children and
if you can interest the children then you get the parents interested. In
Macon County alone the county surveyor told me there are 20,000 acres of
ground that are absolutely worthless except for pasture because they
form bluff land along the Sangamon river. It isn't a large stream, I
suppose down here you would call it a creek, but the city has put a dam
across the river and trees were planted. I tried to create a sentiment
to have that shore planted with nut trees instead of ash and elm and the
various trees that can bear nothing but leaves, but the hardest thing in
the world is to start a new idea.
An ordinary crop of nuts after a tree commences bearing is worth a great
deal more than a crop of wheat or oats and in the meantime you can use
the ground under it if you want to.
Now these are simply my individual efforts in Macon County to get people
interested in nut-bearing trees. It is a hard road and I am like some
other people, I don't like to be pointed out as a crank, but I am pretty
near that on this subject. With the co-operation of Mr. Reed a year ago
I delivered an address, illustrated with pictures that were supplied by
the Bureau of Plant Industry, on the subject of "The Value of the Nut
Trees for Shade and Food," with the idea of having farm homes made
beautiful by trees and attractive by the fruits thereof to keep the
children home. Last year I delivered an address on "Nut Trees and
Roadside Planting," also illustrated by pictures sent me by Mr. Reed and
through the courtesy of McMillan & Company I reproduced pictures
describing Dr. Morris's new way of grafting. If you will take steps
along those lines and work through the Bird and Tree Clubs and get the
children interested I believe you could do something toward spreading
the gospel of nut culture. I thank you for your attention. (Applause.)
MR. CORSAN: As to getting new members, I am ashamed to say that since I
joined in 1912, I just got one new member actually into the club and
that was Dr. Kellogg. I interested hundreds of people but he was the
only person I got in. The only way to do is to step right up and ask a
man for his money as soon as you give him the proposition. Now that is
where I fail. I struck Mr. MacDonald, the permanent Boy Scout Director,
200 Fifth avenue, New York City. He is very enthusiastic but he hasn't
come in as a member. Then the Overseer of the Boy Scouts, a tall young
fellow with sandy hair and a good complexion, I have forgotten his name,
but he is a splendid fellow. He was enthusiastic but he hasn't come in
as a member. I met Mr. McLean of the Orphan's Home and he is going to
have the Orphan's Home planted with nut trees, but he didn't join the
society. I suppose I didn't beg them enough. I suppose I should say,
"Give your money to me right now, immediately, and let me send it over
to Mr. Bixby." I think that would be the best method of getting in new
members. Then they will read the literature and keep in touch with the
association. I must confess downright negligence for not getting members
into the association. I thought we were a kind of a rich gang and don't
need money. But we have got to have money in order to get people into
the idea of growing nut trees.
THE PRESIDENT: What seems to be the objection?
MR. CORSAN: No objection at all except I had that fault of not gathering
in their membership while I was speaking to them upon the possibilities
of nut culture.
THE PRESIDENT: If you don't get some members in this year there will be
trouble!
MR. CORSAN: Why not give a tree with every new membership so that the
member can plant a nut tree on his own farm, and the Boy Scouts and also
the Girl Scouts would come into this thing, too, as the tall gentleman
from Decatur has said.
MR. PATTERSON: I should like to tell you what happens in our association
in the south of Georgia. For a number of years our treasurer has come up
with a deficit each year. The only practical way that we have found in
the southern nut growers' association for increasing our membership and
getting additional funds is to do it by subscriptions taken at the
meeting. Let each man pledge so many members and turn over the money to
the treasurer to pay up for the members that he has pledged. Then let
him go out and get the members to reimburse himself. In that way we have
increased our membership very much. I do not say that that is the way
that it should be handled here but that is the only way we have found of
solving the problem.
MR. TAYLOR: I represent the Northern Apple Growers' Exchange. We want to
get people who grow apples into our association and the first thing of
all is to get them interested. You first have to attract the attention
of a man, your prospective member, and then you have to arouse his
interest and you have to create a desire. We found that in order to
attract his attention a circularization of people who were eligible for
membership accomplished a great deal. These people were circularized,
given little bits of information here and there, not the information
that was given the members as a rule, not to that extent, but they were
given a certain lot of information from time to time to let them know
that the Apple Growers' Exchange was there. After a while they were
approached personally and if they said "No" we continued circularizing
them a little while longer along a different line. Finally, when we
thought we had gotten them to a point where they were interested, the
problem was to get them properly signed up. So we then made a drive for
those particular individuals by showing them what they could personally
get out of it. After he had joined our problem was to hold him, to keep
him interested until he became enthusiastic. Unless you keep them
interested they are liable to cool off, and once they are cooled off it
is almost impossible to get them interested again. We find the members
who have gone out are the hardest to get back. A way of keeping that new
member in, and helping him to feel that he is a potent factor in the
organization, might be by having some sort of a special communication
with him at the time he joins, or at the next meeting of the
association. I know that in California that is the way they work it.
Keep members informed, not merely with reports of proceedings but with
something like an occasional sheet or two on the latest thing that is
going on, especially for the new members. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I would like to have any other suggestions. Dr. Morris,
have you anything to say?
DR. MORRIS: No, I have been doing a lot of thinking.
THE PRESIDENT: It seems to me it is the one vital thing for us to
consider. We have got to increase our membership.
MR. OLCOTT: Apropos of the remarks of Dr. Taylor comes the question of
the desirability of giving a prospective member something for his money.
Our first problem is to interest someone to the extent of membership and
then to keep him after we get him. Those are problems that require
thought. I think the President in his address suggested that the
association produce young nut trees to be given away to someone to
plant, to interest that someone and others who see it. Would you give
him another tree at renewal time?
THE PRESIDENT: That was the idea.
MR. OLCOTT: The renewal proposition with trees selling at $2.50 to $3.00
apiece would be pretty expensive for the association--for a member to
pay us $2.00 and get a tree for nothing. My personal idea has been that
there should be a state organization in every one of the northern
states, subsidiary to this association; that each association have its
monthly meeting, or maybe quarterly or annual, taking in those who
cannot find it convenient to come to the parent association's
convention.
DR. MORRIS: I will pay the dues, and subscription to the Journal, for
any Boy Scout for ten years if you will make that the object for
striving for a prize in some organization of Boy Scouts.
THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that very much.
THE SECRETARY: I have two suggestions for ways of drawing attention to
our association. The first is lectures. There are a number of our
members who have given lectures on the subject of nut growing. Mr.
Spencer has just told you that he has and Dr. Morris loses no
opportunity to give them. I have given them myself and Mr. Reed of the
Department of Agriculture speaks on nut culture. There is hardly a
member of this association but belongs to some agricultural society or
club. That is one possible place for bringing nut culture to the
attention of people who are interested in either agriculture or
horticulture. I am sure that Mr. Reed of the Department of Agriculture
will send a collection of lantern slides on nut growing to responsible
persons. These slides make lecturing much easier. I will undertake to
get Mr. Reed to make up a collection of slides to be sent out to members
for the purpose of illustrating lectures. My other suggestion is the
writing of articles for magazines, horticultural and agricultural, and
especially high-class horticultural magazines that reach wealthy people
who are interested in new things and in trying experiments, such as the
Country Gentleman, Country Life in America and the Garden Magazine. What
we really want is some person who will give himself continuously to the
promotion of this nut-growing idea. It is a great misfortune that Mr.
Bixby has taken up business again because he made a splendid beginning
in devoting himself to the interests of nut culture. I did a great deal
more myself in the earlier days of this society but circumstances have
been such that lately I have not given it much attention. I feel that
there must be members who are all ready to do work, members who would
like to jump in and take a hand. I would be very glad to share my work
as secretary. I would be glad to hand over the entire work of secretary
to some member who feels an itch to get in and do this sort of work.
THE PRESIDENT: You are very liberal in your service but I think others
ought to take a bigger share so that your duties will be easier and also
Mr. Bixby's. Now that we have this thing going I hope we will stick to
it until we get something concrete because I can't see that we are going
to make much progress just meeting from year to year with an increase of
twenty to twenty-five members. I personally will guarantee a hundred
members for this year for this association. I speak advisedly because I
know what we have been doing in our office this last couple of months. I
am satisfied that I can bring to the association a hundred new members
this year if the rest will bring ten each. We have got to get more
members and more money; let's get down to bed rock and look the thing
squarely in the face and make up our minds to go to it and do it.
MR. CORSAN: Where can these slides be got?
THE SECRETARY: I will undertake to furnish them through Mr. Reed of the
Department of Agriculture. There is also a good moving picture film of
Colonel Sober's chestnut grove that I think can be had. I have used it
myself two or three times.
MR. KAINS: Rochester, as a good many of you know, is the center of the
fruit industry in western New York. Right here is also the scene of one
of the greatest fights to get an association on a paying basis that ever
occurred. Some of you probably know that away back in the fifties
Patrick Barry and Mr. Worter and several others of the fruit growers got
together and formed the Western New York Horticultural Society.
Gradually people came in and took an interest in the work but, as always
in the beginning, there was trouble to make ends meet and Mr. Barry and
some of the others put their hands in their pockets to keep the
association going. At last it got so bad and the amount of the deficit
was so great that it was decided to have a closed meeting, no one to be
admitted except those who had actually paid their one dollar membership
fee. The year that it was announced that this would be put into effect
the following year there was all kinds of a fuss at the meeting. The
next year the people came there in a crowd to see if the rule was going
to be put in effect and the result was the largest meeting the
association had ever had. The only men and women who got inside the door
had paid their dollar. That was the first year that the association got
on its feet. One other method that could be used to spread the love of
nut growing would be to have the association offer a nut tree to
different schools where they would plant it as an Arbor Day tree. In
that way the children would learn the value of the grafted nut tree and
the value of real first-class nuts. The result would be that other
people would become interested in grafted nuts and thus extend the
interest in the whole nut-growing proposition, and your membership would
most likely increase. (Applause.)
THE PRESIDENT: I will ask for nominations from the floor for the
nominating committee.
Mr. Pomeroy, Dr. Morris, Mr. Olcott, Mr. Rick and Mr. Patterson
nominated and elected.
THE PRESIDENT: The next order of business is to call for the reports of
any of the standing committees.
THE SECRETARY: The chairman of the committee on incorporation, Mr.
Littlepage, wrote me not long ago that he was taking active steps to
incorporate the association. I don't know whether Mr. O'Connor may know
if Mr. Littlepage has done anything about it or not.
MR. O'CONNOR: I can't say about that.
THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 7, 1922
THE PRESIDENT: I am going to ask Dr. Taylor to present his paper now, if
he will please.
PROF. RALPH H. TAYLOR: Through a previous arrangement with our secretary
I had assigned to me an entirely different subject from that on the
printed programme, "The Use of Nuts the Year Around." I have prepared a
paper on the original subject and so I will proceed to deliver it in
accordance with my arrangement with him.
I do, however, want to say first, in connection with the use of nuts the
year around, that we from California are vitally interested in that
problem. I know of no problem that faces us more at the present time
than the one of marketing the product that we grow in competition with
the tremendously increasing imports from abroad, brought in from
countries where labor costs anywhere from twenty to fifty cents a day,
and at the highest a dollar a day for what they call skilled labor, most
of it twenty to fifty cents, and with freight rates across the Atlantic
that amount to less than half of our freight rates, or one-quarter of
them. With the commodity in the hands of speculators who are able in
various ways to make tremendous profits, and giving the public none of
the benefit of these conditions, we find it almost impossible to market
our product at a profit. We must get it into the hands of the consumer
cheaply. We are endeavoring to do it. One of the plans is to encourage
the use of nuts the year around, and the California Almond Growers'
Association, whom I represent, are planning now to shell their own
almonds and put the kernels up in vacuum packages, both tin and glass,
and make it possible for the housewife, instead of going to the candy
stores and buying salted almonds for a dollar to a dollar and a quarter
once or twice a year, to secure her own almonds, blanch them herself and
use them considerably more often because she can get them cheaper. We
believe it is going to be worth while for us to go into the business the
year around. The demand at the present time is for almonds for a brief
period up to the first of January. Thereafter there is no sale until the
following November. Under those conditions you can see that with
increasing crops we are facing difficulties that are almost
insurmountable. Therefore we are changing the form in which we are
marketing part of our crop. I want to say to those people who do
recognize the value of almonds for food that it is going to be possible
for you to secure them in a most desirable form, clean, wholesome and
absolutely fresh, as almonds packed in vacuum. They will be just as
fresh as when they are put in from the orchards of California.
ALMOND POSSIBILITIES IN THE EASTERN STATES
BY R. H. TAYLOR[2]
There is probably no better way to open a discussion of this kind than
by asking a question and then using it as a text. The future
possibilities for almond production in the eastern states can not be
stated any other way than as a question. For my text I am indebted to
your secretary, Dr. W. C. Deming. It is taken from a letter written by
him under date of June 22nd to Mr. T. C. Tucker, the manager of the
California Almond Growers' Exchange, and is as follows:
"Why can't we breed an almond that will do in the East what its
sister, the peach, does?"
Any answer we might give must be, of necessity, more or less empirical
in nature.
[2] In charge Field Department, California Almond Growers' Exchange.
In order properly to understand that answer, and I shall attempt to give
one later, certain fundamental relations and limitations must first be
considered; then the possibilities of any given line of procedure may be
more clearly understood.
Botanically the almond is very closely related to the peach, both
belonging to the genus _Prunus_, sub-genus _Amygdalus_. The species of
the peach being _persica_, and of the almond, _communis_. In fact the
two trees are in many respects so much alike that it is possible to
select twigs and leaves from each which cannot be distinguished except
by an expert, and even he may be misled at times. Ordinarily, however,
they are of sufficient difference to be readily distinguished.
In the fruit the principal difference is that the fleshy portion of the
peach becomes in the almond a leathery hull which splits at maturity
revealing a seed or nut, the shell of which is generally softer than
that of the peach pit. The kernel may or may not be bitter, depending
upon the characteristics of that particular seedling. If 100 almonds
from a sweet almond tree are planted and brought to bearing it is
probable that from a third to a half of them would produce bitter
almonds. As a matter of fact, we have had by actual tests as high as 50
per cent. bitter. The peach, on the other hand, will, probably in 99-1/2
per cent. of the cases, produce a seed with a bitter kernel, only very
rarely a seed developing which will produce edible kernels. The same is
true of the apricot, the Smyrna variety being an edible apricot with an
edible kernel.
The almond is normally the first of the stone fruits to begin growth and
come into blossom in the spring and is also normally the last tree to
become dormant in the fall. It is evident, therefore, that its normal
winter resting period is comparatively short. The peach has a much
longer resting period than the almond although less than the apple, pear
and other similar fruits, and it is for this reason that peach
production is possible in a commercial way in many sections of the East.
In California, where almonds and peaches are very often planted in close
proximity, many seedlings are known which are very evidently natural
crosses between the peach and the almond. In addition many artificial
crosses have been made with no difficulty and have been planted and
brought to maturity. The products of these crosses have shown the same
general characteristics as those found naturally.
We are familiar with a peach-almond growing on the edge of a large
almond orchard in California which produces good crops of fruit quite
regularly. The fleshy portion or hull is almost edible, being much drier
than the flesh of an ordinary peach and yet much more fleshy than the
hull of the ordinary almond. It has a slight amount of astringency, a
characteristic of the almond hull, but not sufficient to prevent its
being eaten. Upon maturity this fleshy portion or pericarp splits but
does not open as is usually the case with almond hulls. Inside this the
pit, stone, seed or nut, or by whatever name it may be called, exhibits
characteristics of both the peach and the almond. It does not have the
deep corrugations of the peach pit nor does it have the comparatively
smooth shell with small pores of the almond. In this particular variety
the kernel is mildly bitter. In almost every respect this cross exhibits
characteristics of both the peach and the almond. In other cases this is
not true, some approaching more nearly the almond type while others are
almost indistinguishable from peaches. In other words, the variations
are those naturally to be expected in hybrids.
Now to return to the almond again. We find that for best results in
production the almond must be grown in a climate where the winters are
comparatively short and yet where there is sufficient cold weather to
force the trees into complete dormancy. Where the winters are long or
the summers are so dry as to force the trees to come dormant too early
in the fall there is a great tendency to premature blossoming in the
spring. In other words, the first warm weather in the late winter will
bring the trees into bloom because of the fact that they have completed
their normal rest period. This same condition has been found to be true
of certain varieties of peaches which can be grown in the South but do
not do well when planted in the North. It is for this reason primarily,
in our judgment, that almonds do not produce under eastern conditions.
There are other factors, such as extreme humidity, which may have a
bearing, and undoubtedly would in the maturing of these nuts, but this
should not prevent them bearing provided they could escape the adverse
weather of late winter and early spring.
A mistaken notion has been given considerable credence that the almond
is much more tender to frost or cold than the peach. Our experience,
where the two have been grown side by side under identical conditions,
is that the almond will stand fully as much cold as the peach and in
some cases even more. The reason why almond crops are lost oftentimes
when peach crops are not is due to their earlier blossoming and
consequent subjection to the more severe weather of early spring which
the peaches avoid.
It is evident, therefore, that the principal problem in producing
almonds in regions of long winters, as compared with those localities
where almonds can be produced, is to secure an almond which naturally
has a long resting period, resulting in late blossoming, and yet one
which will mature its fruit reasonably early. An almond tree beginning
to blossom about the first of February will usually ripen its crop
between the first and middle of August, though sometimes later. Those
beginning to blossom about the first of March or later ripen their crops
during September usually and often extend into October.
The question of soils and stocks is too broad to discuss here, except to
dismiss it with the statement that the soils that will successfully
produce peaches should also prove reasonably satisfactory for almonds
through the use of peach rootstocks. These are commonly and successfully
used in commercial almond orchards in the West.
Whether it will ever be possible to produce commercial almonds will
depend upon whether an almond can be bred which will fulfill the
requirements of late blossoming and early ripening and at the same time
answer the requirements of a commercial nut. We should judge that it is
possible, although we believe it is a big problem. Our reason for
thinking so is that the Ridenhauer almond under eastern conditions will
often produce nuts and it is recognized as doing quite well. We have
never had an opportunity of tasting this nut but have seen photographs
of the tree and have examined personally the nuts. Without any knowledge
as to the actual ancestry of this nut we are very much inclined to the
belief that it is a peach-almond. If this is so it opens up a line of
breeding possibilities which should not be overlooked.