Northern Nut Growers Association, report of the proceedings at the eighth annual meeting | Page 9

The
worms this year in Connecticut have been terribly destructive. My trees
that I go to inspect every two or three weeks, at one inspection would
be leafing out, at the next would be defoliated. If such trees are about
your house where you can see them every day or two you can catch the
worm at its work. So for experimental planting I think places about our
houses and barns can be very successfully utilized. When it comes to
commercial planting, I think we must recommend for nut trees what we
do for peach trees. We must give them the best conditions. I am hoping

from year to year that somebody will come forward to make the
experiment of planting nut trees in orchard form and give them the best
conditions, as he would if he were going to set out an apple or peach
orchard. The association has made efforts by means of circulars to
interest the experiment stations, schools of forestry and other
agricultural organizations. A number of the members of such
organizations are members of the association. The work has been taken
up to some slight degree in such places as the School of Forestry at
Syracuse. I do not recall any others at this moment, although there are
some. I will read part of a letter from Professor Record of the Yale
School of Forestry: "The only reasons I can think of why the
consideration of nut trees is not given more attention in our school are
(1) it comes more under the head of horticulture than forestry (2) lack
of time in a crowded curriculum (3) unfamiliarity with the subject on
the part of the faculty." We would like to interest these faculties in nut
growing. We look upon them as sources of education but evidently we
are more advanced than they are in the subject of nut growing and it is
up to us to educate them.
COL. VAN DUZEE: Right now when you are at the beginning of nut
growing in the North you cannot over estimate the value for the future
of records. My heart goes out to the man who comes to us as a beginner
and wants to know something definite. Our records are the only thing
we can safely give him. The behavior of individual nut trees, the
desirability of certain varieties for certain localities--those things are of
tremendous value.
No doubt you know that in California they have come to the point in
many sections where they keep records of what each individual tree
does. I began that some years ago with the commercial planting that I
have had charge of for the last twelve years. We now have an
individual tree record of every nut produced since these trees came into
bearing--about 2500 trees. I went further than that--I kept a record of
the value of the different nuts for growing nursery stock so that I might
grow trees that would be the very best produced in our section. Now
the years have gone by and I have a ledger account with every tree in
that 2500 and I know exactly what it has given me. I know how many

nuts it has produced. You would be surprised to see the wide
discrepancy in those records, the different behavior of individual trees.
I wish I could talk to you longer on that subject. It is something I am
very enthusiastic about.
By virtue of the records we have kept for years I have found a source of
supply for seed nuts and nursery stock which has proved to be a
constant performer. I bud this nursery stock from trees with individual
records that have proved themselves to be good performers, I have
found that certain varieties have proved themselves not worthy of being
planted, and certain other varieties have proven themselves at least
promising. This last year I took 100 Schley, 100 Stuart, 100 Delmas
and 100 Moneymaker trees and planted them all on the same land. Now
these trees, you understand, are grown from the stock grown from a nut
that I know the record of for years. I know its desirability. The buds are
from selected trees whose records I have. More than that, I alternated
the rows and the trees in the rows. These trees are now where they have
got to stand right up and make a record so that we will know ten years
from today what is the best variety for our section.
I do not think I can make myself as clear as I wish I could this morning,
but here is the point. If anybody comes to me I can tell him definitely,
and I have records in my office to show, what the different varieties are
doing and what