Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report: at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report: at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
+Size of crop:+ Nut growers want their trees to bear large annual crops of
nuts. It is very seldom that one hears a nut grower express the opinion
that a certain tree is carrying too many nuts for the crop to attain
proper size and fill well, yet this is very often the case. Furthermore,
the production of a large crop of poorly filled nuts one year is almost
certain to result in a light crop or none at all the following year.
There is a very close inverse relation between the size of the crop
produced and the degree to which the nuts are filled at harvest, namely,
the larger the crop the less the nuts will be filled. It has been
pointed out above that nuts are storage organs, and the food materials
required to grow and fill them must be made in the leaves. When too many
nuts are set and carried through to the filling period, in proportion to
the number of leaves or the leaf area of the tree, it is not possible
for the leaves to synthesize the large amount of food materials required
to fill the nuts. In pecans, for example, it has been shown that six to
eight leaves are required normally to fill a nut properly and 10 or more
leaves per nut if the tree is to flower and set a crop the following
year. Other ratios for number of leaves or leaf area exist with other
kinds of nuts. It is general experience that large crops of nuts remove
such large amounts of food materials and minerals from the trees that a
light crop or no crop at all is produced the following year. This is
especially true if the nuts are not especially well filled in the "on
crop year."
+Size of nuts:+ Almost everyone prefers large nuts to small ones, and that
is one reason, why the larger sizes command a higher price on the
markets. Many remember how popular the McCallister hican was a number of
years ago because of its extremely large size. Such varieties of the
pecan as Nelson and Mahan were very popular because the nuts produced
were generally much larger than those of other varieties. These
varieties remained popular until experience in growing them showed that
they were very often poorly filled at harvest. As a general rule, large
nuts are more difficult to fill properly than small nuts. This is
obvious, because much more food material must be made by the leaves and
transported to fill the kernels of large nuts than is required to fill
an equal number of nuts of smaller size. In seasons with conditions
favorable for both tree growth and growth in size of the nuts, it is
often the experience that the nuts are poorly filled at harvest. On the
other hand, if the weather is dry during the period in which the nuts
are growing in size, they are much more likely to be well filled at
maturity. In fact, the writer has seen several instances in which,
because of severe drought in the spring, pecans were undersized, yet the
kernels developed and filled so well that the shells of the nuts cracked
at maturity.
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