The Pecan and its Culture Part 13

PART IV.

Harvesting. Marketing.

CHAPTER XIII.

GATHERING, STORING AND MARKETING PECANS.

While, in preparing a crop of pecan nuts for market, such extreme care need not be exercised as in handling a crop of peaches, plums or oranges, still there are a number of details which require careful attention to secure the best results. Careful attention to these few points is quite as necessary as in handling any other fruit crop, though it might appear otherwise.

_Time to Gather._ As a rule the bulk of the nut crop must be disposed of before Thanksgiving, and there is in consequence a strong disposition to gather the crop anyway, whether ready or not. Much might be said on both sides of the question, but in general it must be granted that gathering the crop while still somewhat immature, and beating the trees to cause the nuts to drop, cannot be commended.

When the great majority of nut husks are open, the crop of the tree is ready to be harvested. It will not do to wait until every burr is open (some varieties never open, but such are extremely undesirable), for it will usually be found that by far the most of those which do not open, on trees which open their burrs uniformly, are faulty, and it will not pay to wait for them. Neither should such be left on the tree, but the whole tree should be stripped at the time already indicated. It will be necessary to use light bamboo poles to remove the nuts with closed burrs.

_Picking._ The nuts must either be picked by hand or knocked off the trees onto the ground with sticks. From whatever standpoint we may regard the gathering of the crops, in orchards of good varieties, the best plan for the removal of the nuts is to take them off, in so far as possible, by hand. Men should climb the trees and collect the nuts in sacks. Men provided with sacks can, with the help of a good extension ladder, reach the most of the nuts on ordinary trees, up to forty or fifty feet in height. A good man will pick one hundred pounds of the sh.e.l.led nuts in a day, at a cost of one dollar--or one cent per pound.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35. After the Harvest.]

In gathering the crop, the product of each individual tree, in the case of heavy-bearing seedlings, or of each group of trees of a single variety of grafted trees, should be kept in a single pile or lot. It will not do to mix nuts of different sizes, shapes and colors, if the best price is to be hoped for.

_Curing._ As soon as removed from the trees the nuts should be carried to the curing house. This house should be absolutely rat-proof. Here they are to be picked from the hulls, the unopened burrs being placed apart by themselves. If they open later, well and good; some good nuts may be found among them, but usually they are inferior and should be kept strictly apart from the other portion of the crop. The cost of removing a hundred pounds of nuts from the hulls is about fifty cents.

As soon as the nuts have been separated from the hulls, they should be spread out in shallow trays for curing. These trays should be two and one-half or three feet wide and four or five inches deep. The bottoms are best covered with wire netting with meshes about one-half inch square. They may be arranged around the walls of the curing room, one tier above another. The room should be provided with good ventilation so as to give a free circulation of air. In the trays the nuts may be placed two or three layers deep; if placed too deep there is danger of their moulding. They should be turned over from time to time, and, under average conditions, two weeks will be sufficient to cure them thoroughly.

_Grading._ Before packing for market, the nuts should be carefully graded. Too much attention cannot be given to this detail. Rigid grading pays--it pays handsomely, and the more abundant the supply, the better it pays.

It will not do to mix together nuts of all sizes, shapes, and colors--some small, some large, some pointed, some blunt, some dark, some light, some streaked, and then expect to get the full value of the crop. It cannot be done with a good grade of pecans.

Perhaps in no kind of fruit which is placed on the market can a more nearly absolutely uniform grade be made (see Frontispiece). The variety should be the basis of the grade. In gathering the crop, each variety should be put by itself as it is gathered. In most varieties the size is quite uniform, and little else need be done; but if there is any considerable variation in size, the small ones should be removed from the first grade of nuts.

Polishing and staining should not be done. It is always best to let each variety retain its own individual marks and characteristics. These are a part of the market quality of the variety and should, by all means, be retained. Mixed lots of seedling nuts may be polished to render them more uniform, but the staining is an abomination, though some people would rather have it, not knowing, perhaps, what a pecan looks like without it.

_Shipping Packages._ The package should be strong and light, and should afford ample protection to the product. We have known pecans to be shipped by mail, freight or express, in bags, and losses have occurred.

Barrels for larger shipments, and wooden boxes for smaller ones are best, and afford the necessary protection. Gift packages, holding ten or twenty pounds or even more, should be made of half inch stuff at least, with ends three-quarters or one inch thick. Grocery boxes may be cut up, planed off, and made over. In all cases the packages should be neat and clean, and in perfect keeping with the contents. The name and address of the grower, the name of the variety, and the number of pounds should be neatly stamped on the outside.

_Marketing._ As it is at present, so will it be for many years to come, strictly first-cla.s.s pecans will be handled almost entirely by or through a private trade. We know of several growers who dispose of their crops of several thousand pounds annually to private customers who have learned the value of good nuts. So greatly has the demand increased that in no single instance is anyone of these men able to supply the demand of the natural outgrowth of his own work, and orders are usually booked a year or more in advance. This is the ideal method of handling the crop, and the one method which enables the grower to secure the best price for his product.

In building up such a private trade, advertising must be resorted to, either through the newspapers, magazines and other channels, or by distributing samples of nuts. "Once a customer, always a customer"

should be the motto for the grower to hold in mind, and every effort should be made and every precaution taken to _see that the nuts, from year to year, are absolutely uniform in size, shape, and quality_. Do not send a customer one size, shape, or quality one year, at a certain price, and the next year vary it. Such treatment will tend to make customers dissatisfied, and the grower may lose them entirely. This point cannot be too strongly emphasized.

Strictly first-cla.s.s nuts may be disposed of to advantage to the first-cla.s.s grocery or fruit trade in the larger cities. In cities of any considerable size, there will always be found a grocer or fruiter who is willing to take a first-cla.s.s article at a price considerably above the usual market price of ordinary nuts. The writer once submitted samples of nuts of medium, but uniform size and good quality, to a grocery firm in New York. They replied that they would take nuts like the samples at twelve and a half to fifteen cents a pound in carload lots, when the common run of pecans could be purchased at four or five cents per pound.

As the output of high-grade pecans is increased, they may be disposed of through the usual nut trade channels--the commission men. The bulk of the product in the country to-day is handled by commission men, either being purchased direct or sold on consignment. If sold for cash in the home market, well and good, but if sold on consignment, choose one reliable commission house in each city in which the product is to be marketed--never two in the same city--and ship to it right along.

_Storing._ During the cold weather following the gathering of the crop, little or no change takes place in the flavor of the kernels. During the heat of summer, however, they deteriorate. The natural amount of moisture in them is reduced, the air enters, oxidation takes place and the flavor becomes rancid.

These changes can be prevented if the nuts are kept in cold storage, say at a temperature of from thirty-five to forty degrees. When nuts are kept in the house, they should be stored in the coolest possible place, in sealed jars or tight boxes.

PART V.

Diseases. Insects.

CHAPTER XIV.

FUNGOUS AND OTHER DISEASES OF THE PECAN.

The fungous diseases attacking the pecan have not been thoroughly investigated. They have not, however, become so numerous or common as to cause serious damage except in a few instances. The true fungous diseases are usually propagated and disseminated by means of spores, and the most effectual method of control usually consists in spraying with Bordeaux mixture or some other fungicide. For all fungous diseases of the pecan which may be controlled by spraying no substance will give better results than Bordeaux mixture, and directions for preparing it are given at the end of this chapter. Paris green, at the rate of four ounces to each fifty gallons of liquid, may be added to the mixture for the destruction of biting insects. For effectual work in spraying large trees, a platform should be erected on the wagon-bed to make it possible to reach the tops with the spray.

PECAN LEAF BLIGHT (_Cercospora Halstedii_): This disease of pecan leaves causes them to turn brown, wither up and drop prematurely. At first, small brown spots are noted. These become larger, and at length the whole leaf is destroyed. When attacked by this disease the tree makes no progress. An examination of the discolored areas, under a microscope, shows the presence of tuft-like growths of spores upon short conidioph.o.r.es. As they become matured the spores are scattered by the rain or wind and so the disease is spread. It probably lives over from one season to another on the diseased leaves.

The most effective remedy is to spray thoroughly three times with Bordeaux mixture. The first application should be given just when the young leaves are expanding, followed by two others at intervals of two or three weeks. The fallen leaves should, if feasible, be gathered and burned.

Pecan Scab (_Fusicladium effusum_): This disease attacks the fruit, leaves and twigs. The husks of the diseased nuts become covered with dark spots or specks. They become hardened and crack open in places. As a result of the attack, growth is stopped, the fruit does not fill out and mature, but drops prematurely or, in some cases, remains attached to the trees long after the leaves have fallen. Round, black spots form on the leaves when attacked by the fungous. These become dead and brown and in most cases the whole leaf is destroyed. When attacked, the trees are usually so badly injured that they make little progress. Not all varieties are subject to the disease in the same degree and some appear to be entirely exempt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photo by H. A. Gossard._

FIG. 36. Spraying Pecan Trees.]

Those varieties which are not attacked should be given preference in propagating work. The disease may be further controlled by spraying with Bordeaux mixture, as directed under leaf-blight.

PECAN ROSETTE: [L]"The earliest symptoms are a peculiar crimping of the leaves at the ends of the branches. These leaves are smaller with crimped margin, and when held to the light show light green or yellow streaks between the veins. The leaf tissue in these light-colored areas is thin and undeveloped and often breaks away leaving angular holes in the leaves. A tree usually shows the disease over the whole top at once, though sometimes only a single branch is affected at first. As the disease progresses, the foliage a.s.sumes a bunched appearance, due to the formation of tufts of leaves at the ends of the branches. This characteristic has led us to use the term "Rosette" as a name for the malady.

"The next stage of the disease which is observed the second year or later, is a dying-back of the branches from the tips.

This is followed by the development of numerous small, lateral branches from advent.i.tious buds. These are short, producing thick cl.u.s.ters of small, unhealthy leaves, sometimes reduced to mere skeletons, so that the rosetted appearance of the tree is intensified. This goes on from year to year. The growth of the tree is checked and these abnormal branches are formed only to die back each year. Trees in the earliest stages of rosette have been observed to have light crops of nuts, but, when badly diseased, are barren and unsightly or worse. Rosette has been found in all ages, from nursery stock to trees forty feet high.

"The cause of the disease remains a mystery. No fungous or other parasite can be detected in the earliest stages. The appearance of the trees leads us to infer that the trouble is internal, due to some derangement of the nutritive or a.s.similative functions of the plant, but we are unable to correlate this with any corresponding external conditions. That is to say, that so many cases have been observed on fertile soil, when cultivation, drainage and plant food had all been provided, that it is impossible to conclude that the disease could be due to starvation or to the lack of any single element in the soil, nor can it be due to over-feeding, since it occurs in light soils and in neglected orchards.

"It seems probable that it will be cla.s.sed by the plant pathologist with peach rosette, peach yellows, and related diseases, the causes of which still remain unknown after years of investigation. The indications are that it is contagious, though a complete demonstration of this point remains to be made; at any rate, it must be regarded with concern until more knowledge is available."

The best recommendation that can be made in regard to pecans affected by this disease is to dig them up and burn them.

BORDEAUX MIXTURE.

Copper sulphate, 5 pounds.

Lime (unslacked), 5 pounds.

Water, 50 gallons.

Dissolve the copper sulphate in two gallons of water, place it in barrel No. 1 and add water to make twenty-five gallons.