In from two to five years the trees will be ready for budding and grafting, they will have made a good growth above ground, and a bigger one below, they are permanently placed and haven't got to be set back a year or two, or perhaps killed, by transplanting, with loss to the tap roots and laterals. In the writer's opinion that natural tap root of the nut tree growing down, down to water is not to be treated as of no importance. So let your seedlings grow up and down happily while you get ready the stuff with which to build their future character, for seedling trees are very slow in coming into bearing, and uncertain in type and quality of nut. Grafted trees bear early and true to type. Take your choicest bit of ground and put it in the best shape you know how. Then order the finest grafted trees you can find on the market. (See circular on "Seedsmen and Nurserymen".) Your choice will be limited for there are as yet only a few grafted varieties of the Persian walnut and the Indiana pecan, and but one of the shagbark hickory to be had. Of chestnuts there are more and, in the South of course, plenty of pecans. But pecan growing in the South is another story. If you order chestnuts be sure that they do not come from a nursery infected with blight. Get young trees because they are more easily established. Order from two to four of each variety. Fewer than two gives too small an allowance for mortality and more than four, besides the not inconsiderable strain on the pocket, will divide your attention too much; for you have got to give these trees the care of a bottle baby. Set them sixty feet apart if you have the room. If not set them closer. Better closer if that means better care. They may be set in the fall but probably spring is better, as early as you can get them in. Follow the instructions of the nurserymen closely. Digging holes with dynamite is probably good practice. Put some bone meal in the soil around the roots but no strong fertilizer. Some soils need lime. Tamp the soil about the roots with all your might. It cannot be made too firm. Then water them all summer, or until August if they have made a good growth. Give them all they can drink once a week. Sink a large bar about a foot from the tree and pour the water into the hole, as much as the soil will take. Keep up cultivation and a dust mulch or, if you cannot do this, mulch with something else. Mulching doesn't mean a wisp of hay but something thick or impervious. Six inches of strawy manure, grass, vines or weeds; an old carpet, burlap, feed or fertilizer bags or even newspapers, held down with stones or weeds or earth, all make good mulches. These trees ought to grow and, whether you ever succeed in grafting your seedlings or not, you should have at least a small orchard of fine nut trees.