Growing Nuts in the North | Page 2

Steamboat Rock, Iowa, and
many other professors and horticulturists who lent their time and effort
assisting me in my experiments throughout the years. And last but not
least, the author is indebted to his secretary, Dorothy Downie, for
tireless efforts in re-writing the manuscript many times which was
necessary in compiling this book.

GROWING NUTS IN THE NORTH

Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
First Encounters
Chapter 2
First Attempts

Chapter 3
Black Walnuts
Chapter 4
Hazels and Filberts
Chapter 5
Hazels and/or Filberts
Chapter 6
Pecans and Their Hybrids
Chapter 7
Hickory the King
Chapter 8
Butternut
Chapter 9
Pioneering With English Walnuts in Wisconsin
Chapter 10
Other Trees
Chapter 11
Pests and Pets
Chapter 12

Storing and Planting Seeds
Chapter 13
Tree Planting Methods
Chapter 14
Winter Protection of Grafts and Seedlings
Chapter 15
Tree Storage
Chapter 16
Suggestions on Grafting Methods
Chapter 17
Grafting Tape Versus Raffia
Chapter 18
Effects of Grafting on Unlike Stocks
Chapter 19
Distinguishing Characteristics of Scions
Chapter 20
Hybridizing
Chapter 21
Toxicity Among Trees and Plants

Conclusion
Chapter 1
FIRST ENCOUNTERS
Almost everyone can remember from his youth, trips made to gather
nuts. Those nuts may have been any of the various kinds distributed
throughout the United States, such as the butternut, black walnut,
beechnut, chestnut, hickory, hazel or pecan. I know that I can recall
very well, when I was a child and visited my grandparents in New Ulm
and St. Peter, in southern Minnesota, the abundance of butternuts, black
walnuts and hazels to be found along the roads and especially along the
Minnesota and Cottonwood river bottoms. Since such nut trees were
not to be found near Springfield, where my parents lived, which was
just a little too far west, I still associate my first and immature interest
in this kind of horticulture with those youthful trips east.
The only way we children could distinguish between butternut and
black walnut trees was by the fruit itself, either on the tree or shaken
down. This is not surprising, however, since these trees are closely
related, both belonging to the family Juglans. The black walnut is
known as Juglans nigra and the butternut or white walnut as Juglans
cinera. The similarity between the trees is so pronounced that the most
experienced horticulturist may confuse them if he has only the trees in
foliage as his guide. An experience I recently had is quite suggestive of
this. I wished to buy some furniture in either black walnut or mahogany
and I was hesitating between them. Noting my uncertainty, the
salesman suggested a suite of French walnut. My curiosity and interest
were immediately aroused. I had not only been raising many kinds of
walnut trees, but I had also run through my own sawmill, logs of
walnut and butternut. I felt that I knew the various species of walnut
very thoroughly. So I suggested to him:
"You must mean Circassian or English walnut, which is the same thing.
It grows abundantly in France. You are wrong in calling it French
walnut, though, because there is no such species."

He indignantly rejected the name I gave it, and insisted that it was
genuine French walnut.
"Perhaps," I advised him, "that is a trade name to cover the real origin,
just as plucked muskrat is termed Hudson seal."
That, too, he denied. We were both insistent. I was sure of my own
knowledge and stubborn enough to want to prove him wrong. I pulled a
drawer from the dresser of the "French walnut" suite and asked him to
compare its weight with that of a similar drawer from a black walnut
suite nearby. Black walnut weighs forty pounds per cubic foot, while
butternut weighs only twenty-five. He was forced to admit the
difference and finally allowed my assertion to stand that "French
walnut" was butternut, stained and finished to simulate black walnut.
Since it would have been illegal to claim that it was black walnut, the
attractive but meaningless label of "French walnut" had been applied.
Although it is less expensive, I do not mean to imply that butternut is
not an excellent wood for constructing furniture. It ranks high in quality
and is probably as durable as black walnut. I do say, though, that it was
necessary for me to know both the species names and the relative
weights of each wood to be able to distinguish between them
indisputably.
An instance in which the nuts themselves were useless for purposes of
identification occurred when I sent some black walnuts to the Division
of Pomology at Washington, D. C. These were the Ohio variety which I
had grafted on butternut roots. The tree had been bearing for three or
four years but this was the first year the nuts had matured. During their
bearing period, these black walnuts had