Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting: Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting: Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
I am convinced that had I spent as much time with the chestnuts on
favorable soil as I did with hickories that they would probably head the
list of successful nut trees growing. Recently I have purchased an
adjoining piece of property which has the necessary well-drained, sandy
or gravelly soil, which chestnuts seem to like, and I have started my
chestnut orchard there along with a sprinkling of hickory and walnut
trees, merely as a matter of test.
This year the chestnuts are again putting on a fair crop for the number
and the size of the trees involved. As yet, in order to get a reasonable
number of nuts for planting, I have to cross-pollinize them by hand, and
I was surprised and pleased this year to find one Chinese chestnut tree
with staminate bloom, allowing me to make a cross pollinization with an
American sweet chestnut and a Chinquapin type chestnut, which grows to
be a tall tree. These crosses ought to insure trees with a great degree
of hardiness, and should the blight ever strike this territory in the
future they should be highly resistant as well. A few of my chestnut
trees produce nuts that may be the size of the best Chinese chestnuts,
but I am just as fond of the smaller and sweeter chestnuts of the
several Chinquapin type trees which seem to be consistent bearers and
certainly are prolific. There are three trees in a close group which are
strains of the European chestnut combined with American chestnut. These
bear rather large nuts and usually every year have a few and of high
quality. It is conceivable that by crossing this hybrid with Chinese
pollen that something unusual could be produced.
The pure Chinese strain has not proved hardy in this territory and I
have never matured a pure variety. However, there are dozens of
seedlings that are not old enough to prove whether there might be a
hardy specimen among them that may at some time in the future be relied
upon for this species of chestnut.
One other species of nut requires a little space here since it has shown
that it can bear crops and is hardy enough to be included among the
hardy nuts. It is the Gellatly heartnut. It is very subject to the
butternut curculio, but in spite of that it continues to grow quite well
when grafted on black walnut,--a difficult piece of propagation,
however. A tree in St. Paul, on the boulevard, thrives next to a large
butternut, and bears nuts practically every year which the squirrels
delight in cutting down while still green. This tree is not bothered by
the curculio since the curculio does not infest the large butternut near
it.
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