across a butternut that was growing in a soil that would kill a chestnut
very quickly. The soil was very springy and wet and the butternut just
loves that soil. I found that while other butternut trees bore nuts in
clusters of one to three, this butternut tree was bearing them in
clusters of ten and eleven. At Lake George, right in front of the
Post-Office, there was one tree twenty-four years old, two feet through,
that grew butternuts in clusters of ten and you could get a barrel of
nuts from it. It bore again this last summer heavily, not in clusters of
ten but in clusters of seven or eight. When we have damp soil we can't
grow the chestnut but the hickory nut will grow in a swamp, and so will
the butternut.
The Chairman: And the beech.
Mr. Corsan: The beech wants clay; it won't grow unless there is clay.
The Chairman: Our beech will grow where it has to swim.
Mr. Reed: Before we get away from this discussion I think that we ought
to commend Dr. Deming in the selection of this subject and in the
handling of his paper. In my position in the Government, we have a good
many inquiries about nut matters, and they are usually from people who
want to know how to start. The great call for information at the present
time is from the beginners, not from the advanced people, and I am glad
that Dr. Deming took that subject and handled it as he did, and I am
glad that he proposes to issue it as a circular from this Association.
It will be a great relief to others who are called on for information.
I should like to have a word, too, about this tap-root question. From
what has been said it is pretty clear that there is quite a difference
of opinion. We sometimes think we can improve on nature in her ways by
harsh methods and, while I know it is customary in the nurseries of the
South to cut the tap-roots back pretty severely, I wonder, sometimes,
whether that is always the best thing.
I haven't had any personal experience, but I have observed quite a good
deal, and the tendency, it seems to me, is to try to develop as much as
possible the fibrous root. Sometimes that is brought about by cutting
the tap-root, or putting a wire mesh below where the seed is planted, so
as to form an obstruction to the tap-root, so that it necessarily forms
a fibrous root. Where the tap-root is the only root I doubt very much
the advisability of cutting back too severely.
Col. Van Duzee: I have heard this subject discussed all over this
country, in meetings of this kind, and a great deal of energy has been
wasted. I do not think any of us know anything about it, but I do wish
to say this, that when you come to transplant a tree from the nursery to
the orchard, there are things of infinitely more moment than how you
shall hold your knife between your fingers when you cut the roots. The
exposure of the roots to the air, the depth to which the tree is to be
put in the ground, the manner in which it shall be handled--those things
are of infinitely more importance, because we know we can transplant
trees successfully and get good results when the tap-root has been
injured or almost entirely removed. I do not consider that the question
of cutting the tap-root is of very serious importance, but I do think we
should insert a word of caution as to the exposure of the roots of trees
to the atmosphere, and make it just as strong as we are capable of
writing it.
The Chairman: That is a very interesting point, that we have fixed our
eye on the tap-root and talked too much about it. Not long ago one of
the agricultural journals decided finally to settle the question about
the time for pruning grapes, whether it should be done in the fall,
spring, winter or summer, and after summing up all the testimony from
enthusiastic advocates for each one of the seasons, the editor decided
that the best time is when your knife is sharp; and that is very much
the way with the tap-root. Be very particular in getting the root in and
caring for it.
Mr. Pomeroy: Prof. Close, in a bulletin issued two years ago, spoke as
does Col. VanDuzee about protecting the roots of the trees; he said
"when the trees are taken from the box that you receive them in, don't
expose them to the sun or air, puddle every tree, and plant as soon as
possible." I think that is pretty good advice. It doesn't cost any
money, and takes very few minutes, to puddle the trees and it saves many
of them.
The Chairman: I have tried the Stringfellow Method of cutting back top
and root until my men asked me if I didn't want to transplant another
tree instead, and they have grown just as well as trees on which I took
great pains to preserve fine branching roots.
The Secretary: The last thing in my thought was to start a discussion of
this perennial subject of the tap-root, but I should like criticism of
this little circular, no matter how severe, because I am not finally
committed to it and want to make it as useful as possible.
Prof. Smith: Every man likes to ride his own hobby horse. Would it not
be wise to suggest that some of these seedlings be put in odd corners?
Certainly the hickory and walnut are adept in making themselves a home
in the roughest kind of land.
The Secretary: I have tried that, but I don't think, as a rule, the
trees do well when stuck around in fence corners and odd places. To be
sure the trees I put behind the barn or pig pen have grown beautifully,
so that at one time I thought of building barns and pig pens all over
the farm to put trees behind, but where they were set in fence corners
and out of the way places they have not done very well. I think the
experience of others is about to the same effect.
Prof. Smith: My experience has been different from yours. I have some
chestnut and walnut trees, on an unploughable hillside in the corner of
my father's farm in Virginia which I stuck there ten or a dozen years
ago and have done very little to them. Of course they are native. They
have thriven. Nature does it exactly that way.
The Secretary: It seems to me there is no question that they will do
better under cultivation. Of course they may do fairly well in odd
places if they can dominate the other growth.
Prof. Smith: A man could take a pocketful of the various kinds of nuts
and go around his fence corners and plant a few. In an hour he can plant
fifty, and if he gets one to grow it is good return for that hour's
work.
The Secretary: I have advised people to take a handful of nuts and a
cane when they go out walking and occasionally stick one in.
The Chairman: In our locality, people would ask, "Why is that string of
squirrels following that man?"
Mr. Corsan: I have been planting nuts in that way for years.
The Chairman: If a man planted trees which belonged in his neighborhood,
nuts that were already in the dominant ruling group, then his chances
for success would be very good, but if he introduced in fence corners
trees that had to adjust themselves to a new environment, he would find
very few growing and the squirrels, other trees and various obstacles to
development in the midst of established species, would wipe out most of
them. Nevertheless, as it isn't much trouble, I would advise anybody to
take a pocketful of hickory nuts out with him when he goes for a walk
and plant one every little way.
A Member: The idea is good; let us follow it up.
Mr. Rush: I don't think it is feasible at all to plant trees around
fence corners.
The Chairman: In our locality it would not do at all.
A Member: It won't do in any locality. The sods and grass around the
tree will dwarf it and cause a very slow growth. Our time is valuable
and we can't wait on that kind of a tree to bring results. Cultivation
is the main need. Sometimes trees will do well where the soil is rich
and competition absent. In Burlington, N. J. we found a walnut tree
bearing enormous crops in a back yard. I have seen the same thing in
this county, and also in Carlisle, and the Nebo tree, famous for its
wonderful productiveness, has a similar environment. But it is high
cultivation that usually is necessary for the best results in all trees,
and walnut trees particularly.
The Secretary: Here is a note relating to this subject:
"The women of Sapulpa, Okla., who recently organized for city and county
improvement and advancement, have determined to plant pecan, walnut and
hickory trees on both sides of a road now being constructed through
Creek County, basing their action on the theory that two pecan trees
placed in the back yard of a homestead will pay the taxes on the
property. They believe that when the trees begin to bear they will
provide a fund large enough for the maintenance of the road."
The Chairman: That's all right if you can look after them.
Mr. Littlepage: It is very interesting to listen to these discussions of
roadside trees and I have until recently been a strong advocate of them,
but I have changed my opinion. I don't think there is anything in the
planting of trees in fence corners or along the roadside, for several
reasons. The first reason is that nobody knows how long it is going to
take that tree to amount to anything. I wouldn't give two cents a piece
for trees stuck out where you cannot cultivate them and get to them to
fertilize them. Another thing, we are right up against the problem of
the insect pests of these trees and who is going to take care of them
along the roadside? The insect pests will get on them and come into the
fields of the man who is cultivating and raising trees legitimately.
Down in southern Indiana, now, we find along the roadside hundreds of
walnut trees that are every year eaten up with caterpillars. They love
those trees and come over on to my trees. I keep my trees cleaned off
pretty well. There's that problem. Up to a short time ago I was an
advocate of roadside trees. It would be all right if there was some
means of cultivating them. If there is land somewhere that is of no use,
so that it doesn't make a bit of difference whether the trees on it have
insect pests or not, you can go out there and scatter nuts and let it
alone and wait the length of time you've got to wait. I don't think it's
of much value, however, even then. I don't think there is a thing in it.
I used to pride myself on the fact that I had set out more trees than
anybody else in the State of Indiana. I haven't bragged about that for a
long time, though I have set out, perhaps, in the last eight or ten
years, or had set out under my direction, about 750,000 trees; I am not
particularly proud of that any more, but I am proud to meet the fellow
who has set out twenty or thirty acres of trees on good land, the best
he's got, and cultivated them and kept the insects off of them and
burned them up instead of letting them prey on the neighborhood. I think
there should be a law passed that these trees along the roadside must be
cut down or that somebody will have to take care of them.
The Chairman: The original idea of roadside trees was constructive in
its nature but failed to include the idea that, with the increase of
orchard trees, or trees of any one species, we increase the insect pests
because we disturb the balance of nature; and by disturbing the balance
of nature we give advantage to insects which then remain on neglected
trees to prove a menace to our own orchards. It we have various towns
setting out roadside trees and detailing the children to look after
them, asking the children to report on them, I believe the thing can be
made a success and that the taxes of many a small town can be paid from
the nut trees along the roadside, provided you have one boy or one girl
for each tree, their services to be given free and the profit from the
tree to be given to the town.
Mr. Corsan: How about the cattle? Let them keep grazing around?
The Chairman: Oh, my, yes.
Prof. Smith: I think we sometimes let our feelings make us say things
that our brains would scarcely approve. I believe Mr. Littlepage's
charge against the tree on the roadside is not necessarily
substantiated. I don't know just how he is going to take care of his
trees, but if it requires a vehicle carrying spray, I submit that a
roadside tree is about as well fixed as one in his field. If it requires
a man with a stick or a hoe or a ladder, the tree on the roadside is in
about as eligible a location as one in the field. If care implies the
idea of turning over the soil, the roadside is handicapped, but nature
has got along without having the soil upturned. My point is this; there
is on nearly every farm in the East a little patch of land somewhere, a
little row between a road and stream where a few trees can grow, and if
fertilization is required, a few barrels of manure can go there as well
as anywhere else. The fact that a tree is put in a place that is not
ploughed doesn't mean that it is beyond all care. My point is that with
care we can get trees in fence rows without tillage and that, in
addition to Dr. Deming's formal and carefully cultivated plot, there is
about every farm a place where a man can stick a few trees and give them
such care as can be given without tillage.
Mr. Littlepage: I agree heartily with Prof. Smith's theory, but having
had some experience, I find those things that he describes are not done;
there is just that difference, always, between theory and fact. I read a
beautiful book once, written by a woman, entitled, "There is No Death,"
and I found on inquiry that she had already buried four husbands.
(Laughter.) I was much interested in reading, once upon a time,
Rousseau's beautiful story of domestic life and I found that while he
was writing it, his children were in an orphan asylum. A fellow teaching
in the high school in Terre Haute, Indiana, married one of the beautiful
attractive young ladies of that town. Shortly after they were married he
was busy writing and turned and told her that he didn't love her any
more and he wished she'd go home. She was heartbroken and left and it
turned out later that he was writing a book on how to get to Heaven.
(Laughter.) There's just the difference between theory and fact. This
is a beautiful theory. I used to be the strongest advocate of it, but
all you've got to do is to go on a farm and try it. The trees won't get
big enough to amount to anything in our lifetime, because these things
you say you will do to them you don't do; at least, that has been my
experience, and I would like to ask anyone to point to any section in
the United States today, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, where
this theory is carried out successfully; and yet I know it has been
advocated for fifty years.
The Chairman: How about school children reporting on trees under their
care?
Mr. Littlepage: Whenever you give the proper care to them you solve the
problem--whenever anyone will convince me that that will be done. There
is no reason, of course, why the tree won't grow in these places, but my
experience is that they don't thrive.
The Chairman: I've put out thousands of them for public-spirited
citizens, but it would be difficult to find one of them today.
Mr. Rush: In France and in Germany the land is very valuable and they
take a great deal of pride in their nut trees. The nuts we have here in
the Lancaster market, Persian walnuts, are largely brought from France,
Spain, Italy and Germany. The land being so valuable there, they devote
much of their waste land to nuts, like Mr. Smith's idea of planting
along the wayside, and they plant and cultivate them in their yards and
in all corners. They would not, under any consideration, plant a maple
tree just for the shade; the tree must serve for both fruit and shade,
and those are some of the sources of foreign wealth.
Mr. Harris: I don't think the question is so much one of planting in
fence corners as that we have a great deal of waste land on which the
soil is very well adapted to growing nut trees. I know that sometimes in
growing peach trees it is almost impossible to cultivate them. I know
places in western Maryland where the rocks are lying so that you can
hardly plough, and yet the soil is fertile and particularly adapted in
some places for peach trees, and would be for chestnut trees. They have
there a system of cultivation much as if you used the plough, and yet
they are on steep hillsides. There is no reason, I think, why nut trees
shouldn't grow there as well as on the level field where you can
cultivate every inch of soil.
The Chairman: They are looked after, that's the whole thing.
Mr. Gowing: I come from New Hampshire and we have what used to be an old
farm, but it is now a pasture and the soil is quite a potash soil, I
think, amongst the rocks, and there's some apple trees planted there by
the original man that worked this place. It was too rough to plough, but
they have borne us as good apples some years as we have had on the
place; and on this same piece of twenty acres or so, there's some
chestnut trees more than two feet through that were cut off when the
land was cleared, and they must have done well, for they grew to be such
enormous trees.
The Chairman: The trees are planted on this same old stump land?
Mr. Gowing: Yes, sir.
The Chairman: A great deal of stump land can be planted in this way.
Mr. Corsan: That wouldn't be planting them along roadsides and in fence
corners.
The Chairman: No, they would be looked after; the whole thing is looking
after them.
A Member: My idea is that there would be very few nut trees planted if
every one was to start his own trees. They put off planting the trees
even when they can get them at the nurseries, and if they had to start
their own nurseries there wouldn't be one planted to where there's
10,000 now; and I think that in the end the nurserymen are going to
attend to the planting of trees and the other people are going to attend
to growing them. Maybe I'm mistaken but did this Government ever produce
any trees? Prof. Smith spoke of appropriating money and letting the
Government get us some new variety. Hasn't it always been private
individuals who get the new varieties? I have been trying to think of
some fruit tree, apple or something, that a state or the Government has
propagated.
The Chairman: In this country I believe the Government has never done
it, but in some parts of Europe, especially Switzerland, the taxes of
some towns are paid by the trees along the roadside; but there every man
has to report on his own trees and the proceeds go to support the town,
and the taxes of certain small towns are actually paid today by roadside
trees; but this is in a country where land is valuable, and every tree
is under the direct supervision of a citizen who must report on it, and
the product of that tree goes to the Government, he giving his labor
instead of paying taxes.
Prof. Smith: I was merely pleading for the continuation and spread of
that work, both geographically and in increasing the varieties of trees.
Mr. Lake: I am heartily in favor of that, but I think it ought to be
referred to a committee. I want Prof. Smith to write it out in the form
of a letter.
Prof. Smith: I am glad you called my attention to that.
Mr. Lake: The Government and the states are now engaged in such work and
this ought to give it impetus. I think that the time and labor of the
Nut Growers Association, since its organization, will have been well
spent if we succeed in bringing to fructification this one resolution. I
want also to suggest that Prof. Smith include among the nuts, the
beechnut, because there's more meat in beechnuts for the amount of shell
than any other nut we grow.
The Chairman: If there is no further discussion, we will have now to
spend a short time in Executive Committee work. I think we will ask to
have a Nominating Committee appointed first. Mr. Rush, will you kindly
read the list of the names of the men you proposed to act as a
Nominating Committee?
Mr. Rush then moved that the Nominating Committee consist of Messrs.
Lake, Hutt, C. A. Reed, Smith and Deming, and the motion was adopted,
after which the Nominating Committee reported as follows: For President,
Mr. Littlepage; for Vice-President, Mr. C. A. Reed; for Secretary and
Treasurer, Dr. Deming. On Executive Committee: Dr. Robert T. Morris, in
place of Mr. C. A. Reed. On Hybrids, Prof. J. R. Smith, in place of Mr.
Henry Hicks. On Membership Committee, Mr. G. H. Corsan, in place of
Prof. E. R. Lake. On Committee on Nomenclature, Dr. W. C. Deming in
place of Prof. John Craig; the other committees to stand as heretofore.
Mr. Lake: I move that the secretary be instructed to cast the ballot of
the association for these nominations.
The motion was seconded and adopted and the ballot cast in accordance
therewith.
The Chairman: Now I will appoint as a Committee on Resolutions relating
to Prof. Craig, Dr. Deming and the Chairman; Committee on Exhibits, Col.
VanDuzee, Mr. Roper and C. A. Reed, and they will be here this evening
to report on exhibits. Committee on Resolutions, Prof. J. Russell Smith
and Mr. T. P. Littlepage. There is no Committee on Incorporation. Will
someone propose that we have such a committee?
The Secretary: Isn't it a desirable thing that the society should be
incorporated? It was mentioned to me by a wealthy man that if anyone
wished to leave, or give, some money to this association, they would be
much more likely to do it if the society were incorporated.
The Chairman: I think it would be better for someone to make a motion.
Mr. Lake: I move that a Committee on Incorporation be appointed by the
chairman; a committee of three.
(Motion seconded and adopted.)
The Chairman: The Committee on Incorporation will consist of Mr.
Littlepage and Prof. Close. This evening we will meet informally here at
about eight and tomorrow at ten we have the meeting at the Scenic to
hear the papers of Mr. Rush and Prof. Lake and Prof. Reed, and see the
lantern slides. We will first meet here at nine o'clock for an executive
meeting and to look over the exhibits. The Committees will report at
that time.
(After discussion, on motion of Prof. Smith, seconded by Mr. Littlepage,
the selection of the place of the next meeting was left to the Executive
Committee.)
The report of the Secretary and Treasurer was then read.
(SEE APPENDIX)
The Chairman: You have heard the Secretary's report. We had better take
up, first, the question of deficit. What are we going to do about the
$66.00? What prospects have we for the balancing of that account?
The Secretary: That account will be easily balanced, and more than
balanced, by the dues coming in and then I will proceed to run up a
deficit for next year.
The Chairman: You have heard the Secretary's report. If there is no
discussion, a motion to adjourn will be in order.
(Adjourned till December 19th.)
* * * * *
The Convention met, pursuant to adjournment, December 19th, 1912, at
9:30 A. M., President Morris in the Chair, and went into Executive
Session.
It was moved and carried that the President be empowered to appoint a
committee to attend the conference at Albany, called for the
consideration of the hickory bark borer, by the Commissioner of
Agriculture of the State of New York.
The question of the publication of reports of the Convention proceedings
in the American Fruit and Nut Journal, was next taken up and it was
moved by Mr. Lake and carried that the papers and discussions of this
Society shall be used for its own publications exclusively, except as
the Executive Committee deems it to the best interests of the industry
to furnish them for separate publication.
The Secretary: On November 8th, I received a letter from Calvin J.
Huson, the Commissioner of Agriculture of New York, to this effect.
Dear Sir:
At the coming land show in New York this department proposes to have, as
a part of its exhibit, a collection of native and introduced New York
grown nuts.
Can you give us the names of growers of the better strains of nuts who
might be able to furnish material for such an exhibit. Perhaps your
association would be able to assist in the matter. The Department will
be able to stand a reasonable expense for cost of nuts, expressage, etc.
Perhaps a few seedling trees would add interest.... By the exhibit as a
whole we wish to show the variety and quality of nuts that may be grown
in this state....
Very truly yours,
CALVIN J. HUSON,
Commissioner.
He wished me to assist in getting up an exhibit, but as he only gave us
a week I was unable to do anything. I do not know that there is any
action to be taken on that, but I read the letter simply to show that
the interest in nut growing is increasing and that this is an
opportunity for us to make an exhibit another year.