Northern Nut Growers Association Annual Report, 1917 | Page 8

association should memorialize the directors of the other stations to undertake definite nut projects and surveys and get the work under way as soon as possible.
While endeavoring to stimulate private, state and national investigations in nut culture, the author would be very remiss if he failed to recognize the very valuable work already done by the zealous, painstaking and unselfish pioneers of northern nut growing. Messrs. Bush and Pomeroy have given to the country and especially to the north and east, two valuable hardy Persian walnuts. Our absent president, Mr. W. C. Reed, of Vincennes, Ind., is doing a great deal in the testing and dissemination of hardy nut trees. Our first president, though an exceedingly busy surgeon and investigator in medicine, finds time to turn his scientific attention to the testing and breeding of nut trees. Some of our brilliant legal friends, too, find time to pursue the elusive phantom of ideal nuts for northern planting.
We cannot go through the growing list of nut investigators nor chronicle their achievements, but we know that when the history of American horticulture is written up ample justice will be done to their labors and attainments. Let each of us do our part in the building up of the country by the planting of nut trees. Let us plant them on our farms, in our gardens and about our buildings and lawns. Let us induce and encourage our neighbors to plant and do all possible to make nut planting fashionable until it becomes an established custom all over the land. It will not then be long before valuable varieties of nut trees will be springing up all over the country. This association will then soon have a wealth of available data at hand to give to intending planters in all parts of the country.
A MEMBER: In Europe they raise a great many nuts that they ship to this country, chestnuts, hazels and Persian walnuts. I understand they grow usually in odd places about the farms, but the aggregate production amounts to a great deal. We could very well follow the lead given by Europe in that particular, at least.
I think we could have for dissemination circulars which would stimulate people to plant nut trees more widely than at present.
THE SECRETARY: This question of nut planting in waste places always comes up at our meetings and is always encouraged by some and frowned upon by others. I do not think we ought to recommend in an unqualified way the planting of nut trees in waste places. I have planted myself, lots of us have tried it, and found that most nut trees planted in waste places are doomed to failure. I do not recall an exception in my own experience. I understand that in Europe the road sides and the fence rows are planted with trees and the farmers get a part of their income in that way. But with us in Connecticut nut planting in waste places does not seem to be a success. It is quite different when you come to plant nut trees about the house and about the barn. They seem to thrive where they don't get competition with native growth and where they have the fertility which is usually to be found about houses and barns. In fact, I have advocated the building of more barns in order that we might have more places for nut trees. I think we should plant nut trees around our houses and barns where we can watch them and keep the native growth from choking them, and where we can give them fertility and keep them free from worms. 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