Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting: Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association, Report of the Proceedings at the Fourth Annual Meeting: Washington D.C. November 18 and 19, 1913
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
I suppose the majority of you have very little or no idea of
agricultural conditions in Utah. Perhaps some think it is a desert. When
I went to Utah, three or four years ago, the first thing that struck my
mind forcibly in traveling around through the state was the absolute
lack of any nuts. Being born and brought up in Massachusetts, I
naturally noticed this, as one of the pleasures of my boyhood days
consisted in gathering chestnuts, hickory nuts, hazelnuts and
beechnuts. We found them all around the fence corners and pastures and
in the woods, and I missed this in Utah, and it occurred to me
immediately to look up the cause of the lack of nuts in the state and I
found no good reason except that nature has not seen fit to plant nuts
there. There is no reason in climatic or soil conditions which will make
it impossible to grow many of the hardier nuts, and even, in the
southern part of the state, to grow almonds and the tenderest walnuts.
Climatic conditions are not unlike some of the best fruit sections in
New York. Peaches and apples are grown successfully and as soon as you
get down to the central and southern part of the state, many of the
hardier European grapes are grown. In the extreme southern part you can
grow any of the European grapes grown in California, so nothing in the
way of climatic conditions exists which would prevent the development of
nut growing in this state. The soil conditions vary widely, all the way
from the sandy loams to the deep soils and gravels, and it is possible
to find thousands of acres of deep, rich loam soil. Some of it is five
to twenty-five feet deep. Of course the rainfall in that semi-arid
region is insufficient for nuts but that can be supplemented by
irrigation water, so that is practically no disadvantage. Since I have
been there I have tried to interest some of the fruit growers in the
planting of a few different varieties of the hardier nuts, and I have
distributed among them some of the walnuts and this year I am bringing
in some of the old shagbark hickory nuts from Massachusetts, and I am
going to distribute them among my friends and acquaintances there to be
used to raise shade trees--trees around the home and pastures--and I
find there is considerable interest manifested in the last few years in
nut planting. The nut industry has a little mite of a start there in a
way--that is, there are a few seedling trees distributed from Logan on
the north to Arizona on the south. Seedling Persian walnuts fruit from
Brigham City on through Salt Lake and Provo, and practically all of the
nuts that are produced there in the state are of seedling origin. It is
reasonable to expect that some of the best grafted varieties will be
very much better. It seems to me that the state has every natural
condition for success in the production of nuts. If not in a commercial
way we can do a great deal to our advantage in planting nut trees as
shade trees. I simply want to let you know that there is a man out there
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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