Growing Nuts in the North Part 3

"September 7 and 8: Wild hazels ripe and picked at this time.

(Their kernels showed no shrinkage by October 25.)

September 14 and 15: I picked ripe nuts from hazilbert No. 5 which seems to be the first to ripen. Also picked half of the European filberts. (There was slight shrinkage in the kernels of the latter a few weeks later showing that they could have stayed on the trees another week to advantage.)

All of the nuts of a Jones hybrid, which is a cross between Rush and some European variety such as Italian Red, could have been picked as they were ripe. Some were picked.

The almond-shaped filbert cla.s.sified as the White Aveline type, was not quite ripe; neither were hazilberts No. 2 and No. 4, nor the Gellatly filberts. Wild hazelnuts at this time had dry husks and were falling off the bushes or being cut down by mice.

September 21 and 22: The remaining European filberts of the imported plants were picked. Also, I picked half of the White Aveline type nuts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Carlola Hazilberts No. 5, about 8/10/42. This is the earliest ripening and thinnest sh.e.l.l of the large type hazilberts, not the largest size however. Carlola Weschcke shown in picture. Photo by C. Weschcke_]

September 28 and 29: We picked most of the nuts remaining on hazilbert No. 5 and the remainder of the White Aveline type. At this time we record a heavy frost which occurred during the previous week, that is, between September 22 and 28th. Since it froze water it was considered a "killing" frost. However, the damage was spotty all over the orchard, most things continuing to develop and ripen. Winkler hazels picked and examined at this time showed them far from ripe. Hazilberts growing next to limestone walls on the south side showed no signs of frost damage whereas the Winkler, on higher ground, showed severe damage to the leaves and the husks of the nuts which immediately started to turn brown.

Leaves of other filbert plants in the vicinity showed no frost damage and the very few nuts that had been left on, such as those of the Jones hybrid, were undamaged.

October 5 and 6: Picked all of hazilbert No. 2 except the last two nuts.

Gellatly filberts were picked about October 10 and were ripe at that time.

October 11 to 13: Two English walnuts were picked and found to be as ripe as they would get. These as well as the black walnuts showed distinct signs of lacking summer heat needed for their proper development. The last two nuts on hazilbert No. 2 and the only nut on hazilbert No. 4 were picked at this time and were ripe.

Chestnut burrs had opened up and the nuts enclosed were fully mature.

October 19 and 20: I found the last of the Winkler hazelnuts had been picked during the previous week, approximately October 14.

These were left the longest on the bush of any hazel and still were not ripe although they were not entirely killed by the several frosts occurring before that time. They are always much later than the wild hazel."

On October 20, I had an opportunity of comparing the action of frost on the leaves of these plants. Those of the White Aveline type had not changed color and were very green. The leaves of the Jones hybrid showed some coloration but nothing to compare with those of the Winkler hazel, many of which had the most beautiful colors of any of the trees on the farm--red, orange and yellow bronze. Hazilbert No. 1, which resembles a wild hazel in appearance and habits of growth, had colored much earlier in reaction to the frost and was as brightly tinted as the wild hazel and Winkler plants except that, like the wild hazel, it had already lost much of its foliage. Some of the wild hazels were entirely devoid of leaves at this time. Hazilbert No. 5 showed the best color effects with No. 4 second and No. 2 last.

The color of the leaves and the action of the frost on the plants during the autumn is another thing, in my opinion, that helps to differentiate between and to cla.s.sify European filberts, American hazels and their hybrids. My conclusion in regard to the effect of frost is that the reaction of the Winkler hazel is very similar to that of the wild hazel in color but exceeding it in beauty since its leaves do not drop as soon after coloring. At this time, the leaves had not changed color on the imported European plants, the Gellatly filberts from British Columbia or the White Aveline type. They had turned only slightly on the Jones hybrid. I think an accurate idea of the general hardiness of a plant is indicated by the effect of frost and by early dropping of leaves, using the st.u.r.dy wild hazel as the limit of hardiness and a.s.suming that its hardiness is shown by both degree of coloration and early dropping of leaves.

In noting the action of frost on the Winkler hazel, I have mentioned that it was more like that on the American hazel than on the European filberts. The Winkler has always been considered a native woodland hazel, but, although it does show several similarities to Corylus Americana, I have also noticed certain qualities which definitely suggest some filbert heritage. I have based my theory on a study of the Winkler hazels which have been bearing annually at my farm for six years, bearing more regularly, in fact, than even the wild hazels growing nearby. My comparisons have been made with wild hazels in both Minnesota and Wisconsin and with European filberts.

I found the first point of similarity with the filbert is in the involucre covering the nut. In the wild hazel, this folds against itself to one side of the nut, while in the filbert it is about balanced and if not already exposing a large part of the end of the nut, is easily opened. The involucre of the Winkler hazel is formed much more like that of the filbert than that of the hazel. In Corylus Americana this involucre is usually thick, tough and watery, while in the filbert it is thinner and drier, so that while a person may be deceived in the size of a hazelnut still in its husk, he can easily tell that of a filbert. This is also true of the Winkler whose involucre is fairly thick but outlines the form of the enclosed nut. Another feature about the involucre of the Winkler which cla.s.ses it with the filberts rather than the hazels is in its appearance and texture, which is smooth and velvety while that of the hazel is hairy and wrinkled.

The staminate blooms of the Winkler hazel show similarity to those of both filberts and hazels. Sometimes they appear in formation at the ends of branches, much as those of the European filberts do, in overlapping groups of three or four. Again, they may be found at regular intervals at the axis of leaf stems very much as in the case of the American hazel. The buds on the Winkler hazel are dull red which is also true of those on the hybrid hazilberts, another indication of hybridity.

The initial growth of the embryo nut is very slow in the Winkler as it is in the filbert, as contrasted with the very rapid development of the native hazel embryo which matures in this lat.i.tude about one month ahead of the Winklers and some filberts. Although Winkler nuts are shaped like hazels and have the typically thick sh.e.l.ls of hazelnuts, their size is more that of a filbert usually three times as large as a native hazel.

During the years between 1942 and 1945 many new hybrids between filberts and hazels were produced. Four wild varieties of hazels, which had unusual characteristics such as tremendous bearing and large size nuts and others having very early maturing or very thin sh.e.l.led nuts were used as the female parents in making the crosses. Pollen was obtained from other parts of the U. S. or from filbert bushes which were growing on the place. Crosses included pollen of the Barcelona, Duchilly, Red Aveline, White Aveline, Purple Aveline, the Italian Red, Daviana and several hybrids between other filberts and hazels. By 1945 the number of these plants were in the neighborhood of 2000 and by 1952 considerable knowledge had been gained as to the hardiness, blight resistance to the common hazel blight (known scientifically as cryptosporella anomala), freedom from the curculio of the hazelnuts (commonly known as the hazel weevil) and resistance to other insect pests. Also, considerable data had been acc.u.mulated by cataloging over 650 trees each year for five years; cataloging included varied and detailed studies of their growth, bearing habits, ability to resist blight, curculio and other insects, the size of the nut, the thinness of the sh.e.l.l and the flavor of the kernel. Several books of all this detail were acc.u.mulated in trying to nail down several commercial varieties that would be propagated from this vast amount of material. Although some bushes produced good nuts at the rate of as much as two tons to the acre, measured on the basis of s.p.a.ce that they took up in the test orchard, the most prolific kind seemed to be the ones that had a tendency to revert to the wild hazel type. The better and thinner-sh.e.l.led types, more resembling the filberts, seemed to be shy bearers so that there being a host of new plants to catalog (more than 1000) which had not indicated their bearing characteristics, we included these among the possible ideal plants we were seeking. Although there were several plants that could be considered commercial in the original group of over 650 it has been thought that the waiting of a few more years to ascertain whether there would be something better in the next 1000 plants to bear that would be worthwhile waiting for and no attempt has been made to propagate the earlier tested plants. Some of these 650 tested hybrids proved to have nuts that were cla.s.sed as Giants being much larger than the filberts produced by male or pollen parent such as the Barcelona, Duchilly or Daviana, and several times the size of the nuts of the female parent which was the wild hazel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Wild Wisconsin Hazel discovered on Hazel Hills Farm near River Falls. Note size of nuts in husks as compared to woman's hand.

This plant became the female parent in over 1,000 crosses by pollen furnished from male blooms of Duchilly, Barcelona, Italian Red, White, Red, and Purple Aveline and many other well known filberts. Photo by C.

Weschcke_]

Chapter 6

PECANS AND THEIR HYBRIDS

At the same time, October 1924, that I purchased Beaver hickory trees from J. F. Jones, I also procured from him three specimens each of three commercial varieties of pecan trees, the Posey, Indiana and Niblack, as well as some hiccan trees, i.e., hybrids having pecan and hickory parents. Only one tree survived, a Niblack pecan, which, after sixteen years, was only about eighteen inches in height. Its annual growth was very slight and it was killed back during the winter almost the full amount of the year's growth. In the 17th year this tree was dead.

In September 1925, at a convention of the Northern Nut Growers'

a.s.sociation in St. Louis, Missouri, I became acquainted with a man whose experience in the nut-growing industry was wide and who knew a great deal about the types of hickory and pecan trees in Iowa. He was S. W.

Snyder of Center Point, Iowa. (He later became president of the a.s.sociation.) In one of his letters to me the following summer, Mr.

Snyder mentioned that there were wild pecan trees growing near Des Moines and Burlington. I decided I wanted to know more about them and at my request, he collected ten pounds of the nuts for me. I found they were the long type of pecan, small, but surprisingly thin-sh.e.l.led and having a kernel of very high quality.

I first planted these nuts in an open garden in St. Paul, but after a year I moved them to my farm, where I set them out in nursery rows in an open field. The soil there was a poor grade of clay, not really suited to nut trees, but even so, most of the ones still remaining there have made reasonably good growth. I used a commercial fertilizing compound around about half of these seedlings which greatly increased their rate of growth, although they became less hardy than the unfertilized ones.

After five years, I transplanted a number of them to better soil, in orchard formation. Although I have only about fifty of the original three hundred seedlings, having lost the others mainly during droughts, these remaining ones have done very well. Some of these trees have been bearing small crops of nuts during the years 1947 to date. The most mature nuts of these were planted and to date I have 17 second generation pure pecan trees to testify as to the ability of the northern pecan to become acclimated.

I gave several of the original seedlings to friends who planted them in their gardens, where rich soil has stimulated them to grow at twice the rate of those on my farm. There were four individual pecan trees growing in or near St. Paul from my first planting, the largest being about 25 feet high with a caliber of five inches a foot above ground. Although this tree did not bear nuts I have used it as a source of scionwood for several years. These graftings, made on bitternut hickory stock, have been so successful that I am continuing their propagation at my nursery, having named this variety the Hope pecan, for Joseph N. Hope, the man who owns the parent tree and who takes such an interest in it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Shows the use of a zinc metal tag fastened by 16 or 18 gauge copper wire to branch of tree._]

By the year 1950 the tree had such a straggly appearance, although still healthy and growing but being too shaded by large trees on the boulevard, that Mr. Hope caused it to be cut down. The variety is still growing at my farm, grafted on bitternut stocks and although blossoming it has never produced a nut up to this time.

Another tree given to Joseph Posch of the city of St. Paul, Minnesota, had made even better growth and was luxuriantly healthy and in bloom when it was cut down by the owner because the branches overhung the fence line into a neighbor's yard. This was done in about 1950.

Another tree given to Mrs. Wm. Eldridge of St. Paul still flourishes and is quite large (in 1952 at breast height, 6 inches in diameter) but being in a dense shade, it has not borne any nuts.

The fourth tree, given to John E. Straus, the famous skate maker, presumably exists at his lake residence north of St. Paul. I have not seen it in the last seven or eight years.

Although they are not as hardy as bitternut stocks, I have found the wild Iowa pecan seedlings satisfactory for grafting after five years'

growth. I use them as an understock for grafting the Posey, Indiana and Major varieties of northern pecan and find them preferable to northern bitternut stocks with which the pecans are not compatible for long, as a rule, such a union resulting in a stunted tree which is easily winter-killed. Although the Posey continued to live for several years our severe winters finally put an end to all these fine pecans. The root system of the seedling understock continued to live, however.

I chanced to discover an interesting thing in the fall of 1941 which suggests something new in pecan propagation. There were two small pecans growing in the same rows as the large ones planted fifteen years previously. When I noticed them, I thought they were some of this same planting and that they had been injured or frozen back to such an extent that they were mere sprouts again, for this has happened. I decided to move them and asked one of the men on the farm to dig them up. When he had dug the first, I was surprised to find that this was a sprout from the main tap root of a large pecan tree which had been taken out and transplanted. The same was true of the second one, except that in this case we found three tap roots, the two outside ones both having shoots which were showing above the ground. Another remarkable circ.u.mstance about this was that these tap roots had been cut off twenty inches below the surface of the ground and the sprouts had to come all that distance to start new trees. All of this suggests the possibility of pecan propagation by root cuttings. These two pecans, at least, show a natural tendency to do this and I have marked them for further experimentation along such lines.

On the advice of the late Harry Weber of Cincinnati, Ohio, an eminent nut culturist, who, after visiting my nursery in 1938, became very anxious to try out some of the Indiana varieties of pecans in our northern climate, I wrote to J. Ford Wilkinson, a noted propagator of nut trees at Rockport, Indiana, suggesting that he make some experimental graftings at my farm. Both Mr. Wilkinson and Mr. Weber gathered scionwood from all the black walnut, pecan, hiccan and hickory trees at their disposal, for this trial. There was enough of it to keep three of us busy for a week grafting it on large trees. Our equipment was carried on a two-wheeled trailer attached to a Diesel-powered tractor, and we were saved the trouble of having to carry personally, scions, packing material, wax pots, knives, pruning shears, tying material, canvas and ladders into the woods. Mr. Wilkinson remarked, on starting out, that in the interests of experimental grafting, he had travelled on foot, on horseback, by mule team and in rowboats, but that this was his first experience with a tractor.

When he saw the type of grafting with which I had been getting good results, Mr. Wilkinson was astounded. He declared that using a side-slot graft in the South resulted in 100% failure, while I had more than 50% success with it. He was willing to discard his type of grafting for mine, which was adequate for the work we were doing, but I wanted to check his grafting performance and urged him to continue with his own (an adaptation of the bark-slot graft to the end of a cut-off stub). We both used paper sacks to shade our grafts. Although results proved that my methods averaged a slightly higher percentage of successful graftings in this lat.i.tude and for the type of work we were doing, his would nonetheless be superior in working over trees larger than four inches in diameter and having no lateral branches up to eight feet above ground, at which height it is most convenient to cut off a large hickory preparatory to working on it.

In the late fall of that year, we cut scionwood of the season's growth and inverted large burlap bags stuffed with leaves over the grafts, the bags braced on the inside by laths to prevent their collapsing on the grafts. So we have perpetuated the following varieties:

Hickories: Cedar Rapids, Taylor, Barnes, Fairbanks.

Hiccans: McAlester, Bixby, Des Moines, Rockville, Burlington, Green Bay.

The Major and Posey pure pecans being incompatible on bitternut hickory roots were grafted on pecan stocks, but they proved to be tender to our winters and the varieties were finally lost.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Largest planted pecan in World having a record. About 17 ft. circ.u.mference breast height, 125 ft. spread and 125 ft. height. Very small worthless pecans. Easton, Maryland. Photo by Reed 1927_]

Other experiments I have made with pecans include an attempt to grow Southern pecans from seed, but they seem to be no more hardy than an orange tree would be. It is certain that they are not at all suited to the climate of the 45th parallel. In 1938, I received from Dr. W. C.

Deming of Connecticut, some very good nuts from a large pecan tree at Hartford, Connecticut. Of the twelve pecans I planted, only six sprouted, and of these, only one has survived up to this date and is now a small weak tree. Apparently, the seedlings of this Hartford pecan are not as hardy as those from Iowa.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Iowa seedling Pecans. Tree planted in 1926 as seed.

First crop October 29, 1953. 7/8 of actual size. Nuts were fully matured. Photo by C. Weschcke_]