Growing Nuts in the North | Page 5

that my first attempt to grow hickory seedlings was unsuccessful. I
planted a quart of these nuts and not one plant came up. No doubt the
squirrels dug them up as soon as I planted them and probably they
enjoyed the flavor as much as I always have.
In 1924 I ordered one hundred small beechnut trees, Fagus ferruginea,

from the Sturgeon Bay Nurseries at Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. The
company was very generous and sent me three hundred of them. I
planted these trees in a heavy clay soil with limestone running near the
surface. They grew well the first year, except that there was heavy
mortality during cold weather. In working with these trees my lack of
experience and horticultural knowledge was against me. They could not
tolerate the soil and within three years they were all dead.
To give variety to the landscape at my farm, I planted several other
kinds of trees. Among these were Kentucky coffee-trees which have
beautiful bronze foliage in the spring and honey locusts. I planted five
hundred Douglas fir but unfortunately, I put these deep in the woods
among heavy timber where they were so shaded that only a few lived.
Later, I moved the surviving fir trees into an open field where they still
flourish. About two hundred fifty pines of mixed varieties--white,
Norway and jack--that I planted in the woods, also died.
I decided, then, that evergreens might do better if they were planted
from seeds. I followed instructions in James W. Toumey's "Seeding
and Planting in the Practice of Forestry," in bed culture and spot
seeding. In the latter one tears off the sod in favorable places and
throws seed on the unprotected ground. In doing this, I ignored the
natural requirements of forest practice which call for half-shade during
the first two to three years of growth. Thousands of seedlings sprouted
but they all died either from disease or from attacks by cows and sheep.
One should never attempt to raise trees and stock in the same field.
Because of these misfortunes, I determined to study the growth of
evergreens. I invested in such necessary equipment as frames and lath
screening. Better equipped with both information and material, I grew
thousands of evergreen trees. Among the varieties of pine were:
native White Pine --Pinus strobus Norway pine --Pinus silvestrus
Mugho pine --Pinus pumila montana sugar pine --Pinus Lambertiana
(not hardy in northern Wisconsin) Swiss stone --Pinus cembra (not
hardy in northern Wisconsin) Italian stone --Pinus pinea (not hardy in
northern Wisconsin) pinon --Pinus edulis (not hardy in northern
Wisconsin) bull pine --Pinus Jeffreyi (hardy) jack pine --Pinus

banksiana (very hardy) limber pine --Pinus flexilis (semi-hardy, a fine
nut pine).
Many of the limber pines came into bearing about fifteen years after the
seed was planted. At that age they varied in height from three to fifteen
feet. One little three-foot tree had several large cones full of seed. Each
tree varied in the quality and size of its seeds. Although it might be
possible to graft the best varieties on young seedling stocks, in all the
hundreds of grafts I have made on pine, I have been successful only
once. I doubt that such a thing would ever be practical from a
commercial standpoint unless some new method were discovered by
which a larger percentage of successful grafts could be realized.
I cultivated the Douglas fir, white, Norway, and Colorado blue varieties
of spruce. Besides these, I planted balsam fir, red cedar, _Juniperus
Virginiana, and white cedar, Arborvitae_. Practically all of these trees
are still growing and many of them bear seed.
I wish to describe the limber pine, Pinus flexilis, for it is not only a
good grower and quite hardy but it is also a very ornamental nut pine
which grows to be a broad, stout-trunked tree 40 to 75 feet high. The
young bark is pale grey or silver; the old bark is very dark, in square
plates. The wood itself is light, soft and close-grained, having a color
that varies from yellow to red. The needles, which are found in clusters
of five, are slender, 1-1/2 to 3 inches long, and are dark green. They are
shed during the fifth or sixth year. The buds of the tree are found
bunched at the branch tips and are scaly and pointed. The limber pine
has flowers like those of the white pine, except that they are
rose-colored. Although the fruit is described as annual, I have found
that, in this locality, it takes about fifteen months from the time the
blossoms appear for it to reach maturity. That is, the fruit requires two
seasons for growth, maturing its seeds the second September. The
cones of the limber pine, which vary from three to seven inches in
length,