Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting | Page 7

the place with ripe catkins shedding pollen, I was watching them very closely for fear there would nothing else bloom in time to fertilize the nutlets, and the first thing to offer ripe pollen that could be used was the Stabler walnut, from which I gathered a handful of catkins and carried to the Helmick hybrid and dusted pollen over the cluster of nutlets and succeeded in saving six out of the cluster of eighteen. These matured into full grown nuts which were saved and each of them grew into a nice young seedling. I know beyond question that these seedlings represent the three distinct species mentioned because there was nothing furnishing pollen with which to fertilize them except the Stabler walnut.
THE PRESIDENT: The work that Mr. Snyder and Dr. Drake and Dr. Deming are doing in locating good varieties of nuts is certainly very valuable. If we had the whole country hunting for good nut trees we could tell what the country is producing. We have a great many valuable varieties throughout the United States and Canada.
Our next speaker is Professor T. J. Maney of the Iowa Agricultural College at Ames. I am very much pleased that the experiment stations in some of the states are actively interested in the propagating of nut trees. New York, Iowa and Ohio are doing work along this line and no doubt other experiment stations are interested. In quite a number of them there is a great lack of interest, and perhaps I should say of knowledge, about nut culture in general.
PROF. MANEY: During the past six or seven years, during our regular annual short course, we have been having a week for a nut short course and we have been very fortunate in having Mr. Harrington and Mr. Snyder there. That work has already resulted in the establishment of a nut project that will continue to grow during the coming year.
You recall that Mr. Neilson revived the subject of paraffin. I notice that he always wound up with a plea that someone invent an apparatus to apply the paraffin. What I have here is an answer to the plea. This apparatus consists of a two and one-half inch pipe with a spray nozzle attached. The idea is to put into the tube hot paraffin and apply pressure here, and then with a plumber's blowtorch keep the paraffin heated. The handle is covered with asbestos. I didn't spend much time in working this up but I think it works fairly well. There is one difficulty in perfecting your apparatus to apply hot paraffin, and that is the fact that when it comes out it immediately congeals into a sort of snow. You just can't atomize hot paraffin. The only way is through air pressure. I used this on some dahlia roots quite successfully. This did the work very well in that case and I think for applying it to rose roots and plants of that kind it may work quite successfully. Another thing I thought might be of interest to you is some work in grafting by the use of paraffin. Last year I was interested in grafting some apples. On July 12th I made some regular cleft grafts, using the green wood as the scion after removing the leaves.
DR. SMITH: Wood of that year or previous?
PROF. MANEY: That year. The entire graft was covered with paraffin. This picture was taken on September 5th, a period of 55 days later, and during that time growth was 25 inches. I am sure it can be worked very successfully with different fruit trees. It is especially valuable in replacing dead grafts. These grafts went through the very severe winter very successfully. I am sure I appreciate this opportunity to appear on the program, and I hope to continue with the work at Ames and perhaps appear at future dates.
MR. WEBER: May I ask how hot it got that summer?
PROF. MANEY: Oh, the temperature was up to 100, 103 and 104.
MR. WEBER: What kind of paraffin did you use?
PROF. MANEY: Just ordinary paraffin.
MR. WEBER: Did you notice any bad results?
PROF. MANEY: No, apparently no ill effects.
MR. WEBER: Paraffin has a tendency when it gets extremely hot to run down and kill the graft.
DR. SMITH: What would be the effect of putting in some beeswax?
PROF. MANEY: I think that would be all right.
MR. WEBER: Paraffin this summer killed two nut grafts for me.
DR. ZIMMERMAN: Are you sure it was the paraffin? I have finally come to the conclusion that when the sun gets hot enough to melt the wax it will kill the graft anyway.
MR. WEBER: I noticed the heat did not kill another one that I did not use the paraffin on. Previous years it simply scorched the tree.
DR. ZIMMERMAN: The heavy coating of wax protects