Northern Nut Growers Association Annual Report, 1917 | Page 9

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 soil they are growing in. Here in the north where the industry is in its infancy now is the time to start records. When I saw the subject of Professor Hutt's paper, the "Reasons For Our Limited Knowledge as to What Varieties of Nut Trees to Plant," it occurred to me that if you don't now start right in making records, ten years from today you will still have existing one of the principal reasons why you don't know.
MR. KELSEY: I started out four years ago with English walnuts. I read the account of Pomeroy and so I got a half dozen trees from him. They all died. I got five or six trees from Mr. Jones. I think this is the third year and one of those has some nuts on. I have got now about 150 trees planted in regular rows where I am cultivating them. But I was going to say that four years ago I sent to Pomeroy and asked him if he wouldn't send me a few nuts as a sample. He sent me 16. I cracked two of them. Fourteen of them I put in. I didn't know how to