Read Ebook: Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting Rockport Indiana August 25 26 and 27 1952 by Northern Nut Growers Association Editor

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THE VALUE OF A TREE

A tree out of its natural habitat sometimes becomes worthless. As an extreme example, the orange tree in Indiana has no commercial value and the apple tree in Florida has no commercial value. Therefore, it seems that we should, in Indiana, endeavor to develop better trees in the trees which are at home here. This includes the native hickory and the black walnut, hazels, filberts and the pecans in Southern Indiana. Personally, I am spending quite a bit of time with the Crath Carpathian English or Persian Walnut. Last winter, I lost seven out of fifty trees from some cause, after they had gone through the winter of 1950 and 1951, at a temperature of nineteen below zero without injury. It may have been they were caught last fall by a hard freeze in full foliage, early before the apples were all picked; and, again, it may be blight. I hope not. But this I do know, the hickory and black walnut in their natural habitat were not injured.

I wonder why hickories are so erratic in their bearing habits. Could it be the winter rest period? For example, the peach has to have from seven hundred hours, in some varieties, to twelve hundred hours, in others, of below forty-five degrees temperature, or they will not set a good crop of fruit. The value of a variety of peach in Georgia sometimes is determined by the number of hours of rest period below forty-five degrees that the variety has to have. It has happened that the same variety of peach has produced a good crop in Northern Georgia and a poor crop in Southern Georgia. Where the winter was not as cold in Indiana we never lose crops from the lack of enough cold weather; we lose them from sub-zero temperatures. So you see, the value of a variety in Georgia is different to Indiana.

The value of a tree may be in the wood or in the food its produces, or its beauty in winter. Many a picture is taken of evergreens covered with snow. Its value may be its beauty in summer, or the coloring of its leaves in the fall. There is also a sentimental value; a limb that is just right for a child's swing, the Constitutional Elm at Corydon, or the Harrison Oak at North Bend, Ohio. They have a historical value and are visited by many people.

A man said to me some time ago, "I wonder why God made the hicans the cross between the pecans and the hickory?" There may be a valuable nut tree show up in the second or third generation of the hybrid trees when certain characteristics begin to revert to the parent trees. I have on my farm some hybrid oaks grafted, and am very anxious to see them produce acorns so I can plant them and watch the results. This hybrid originated in the Greene and Sullivan County Forest in Indiana, and is called the Carpenter Oak after Mr. Carpenter, the district forester. It is, apparently, a cross between the shingle oak and the pin oak because it is comparable with both of them.

Sometimes I think trees are as temperamental as people. Some trees, especially the apple, lose their value because they are subject to certain diseases. Some are susceptible to scab, blight, codling moth, rots, blotch, and other diseases, to a point where they become worthless as commercial varieties. The honey locust has been considered one of the trees on farms to be destroyed, because it was thought to be worthless. Now, its value is being found in the correcting of sugar deficiency in dairy cattle. The pods of the honey locust are one of the best foods to correct sugar deficiency and cattle like them and eat them freely. I have on my farm a thornless honey locust that produced ten bushels of pods one year. The honey locust is also a legume and produces nitrogen which, in turn, is used by the pasture grasses and makes more pasture for the cattle.

The mulberry tree that ripens when cherries are ripe has a value in the fact that every mulberry eaten by a bird saves a cherry and the birds are valuable because they destroy insects that cause the worms in cherries.

After observing trees for years, I am convinced that there are certain strains or families of trees in the forest that have outstanding traits. Those traits in growth might be dwarfs or they may be giants; they may have short lives or long lives, like different varieties of apples. The fruit or seeds may be large or small. I believe as reforestation progresses there will be certain trees located which have value as seed trees and which will improve the forest equal to the improvement in livestock on the farms today. The razor back hog that roamed the forest is gone and has been replaced by animals much improved; yet, the forest in which it roamed is the same. Now we are turning to man made forests and a chance to improve them by selecting the more valuable trees for our source of seed. In the native hickory and black walnut, there is a great need for more interest in searching for and preserving the most valuable trees for their cracking quality, flavor, and productivity. There have been and are now, nut trees on farms that were valuable trees, but were known only to the owner and the small boys of the community. These trees should have been preserved for posterity, but many of them are lost forever.

In forestry, a tree's value may be in its ability to re-seed itself. In the kinds of pine, the Virginia pine is one of the best, and also, one of the youngest to produce seed cones. I have counted twenty-five cones on a five year old Virginia Pine tree. In forestry, the red cedar is good to re-seed itself in the area in which it grows. The maple ash, cotton wood, and poplar also grow freely from nature's seeding.

Every tree that grows has a value. The leaves help purify the air; the persimmon and the tree with a wild grapevine are food for wild life. The old hollow tree is a refuge for the coon and o'possum and other wild life. I have a hollow white oak on my farm I let stand because a family of squirrels is raised in it every year. I also have a bee tree and the bees help pollinate my fruit trees so they produce better. A world without trees would be a desolate place. The value of a park is in its trees.

The value of a home is increased by trees. The love of trees and the pride in owning a home is hard to separate. The privilege in America to own a home and plant a tree on your own ground is of great value. It has been said that he, who plants a tree, is truly a servant of God. I sometimes wonder if this great value of the privilege of owning a piece of ground and building a home and planting a tree is in danger of being lost under the present creeping grip of socialism and communism. This privilege of planting and owning a tree is of greater value than any tree, and we must not lose this valuable inheritance in America.

PRESIDENT MacDANIELS: Mr. Magill, are you all set with your program?

MR. MAGILL: Yes, sir. This is to be a discussion of "Methods of Getting Better Annual Crops on Black Walnut--A symposium led by W. W. Magill --Discussion by a panel made up of W. G. Tatum, Spencer Chase, W. B. Ward and Mr. Schlagenbusch." Will those men come here? We will get started.

My business in life is Extension peddler down in Kentucky, working on fruits and nuts and berries, and naturally that takes me into a good many counties. We have 120, and I have been in all of them. Some places didn't have anything, so no reason to go back. But I pick up a lot of conversation, people give you ideas and things to think about.

We were talking about the conditions of the world--everybody's got a good job and plenty of money and biggest incomes that the country has ever known. That's true, but if you take down in the hills and hollows into some places that I go and you take the financial status of certain of those families, it's not measured in thousands of dollars, some cases not hardly measured in hundreds of dollars. It's measured in terms of gratuities and things to eat and not measured by greenbacks, and the families don't pay income tax.

Last fall I was out on a farm in the foothills some 70 miles from Lexington, in a place that most of you folks wouldn't want to live in and call home, a little farm, probably 16 acres, with a widow lady probably 65 years old, living there with her daughter. And among other things, she said, "Mr. Magill, I understand that you are supposed to know something about nuts. See that tree standing right out there?" She says, "I will give you a bill if you will tell me how to make that nut tree bear annual crops."

Well, I was a little bit surprised. I listened, and I got to asking her questions. Some member of the family had gone to Chicago years ago, and she knew about all the black walnut packing firms in Kentucky. This relative had worked in the market, and had indicated she could get a dollar a pound for all the nut meats she would pick out and send to this relative in Chicago. And that nut tree meant about 30 to 35 dollars a year when it had a crop but only bore every other year.

Well, that drove home just a little more to me than ever before the question of why certain nut trees bore and others didn't bear. To that lady there it meant the year it bore and no income from that tree on the year it didn't bear. And she stood there beside the home and pointed out other trees that bore regularly. And she said, "Why do they bear regular crops and this good tree that makes so many fine, big kernels bears every other year?" That's a challenge I am throwing out to this audience today to all the members on this panel.

I am hoping that Pappy Ward or Friend Chase will answer that question completely. The thing I have in mind, is that in a group like we have here today, as many nuts as we have got here, if we think about this question and talk to the folks back home, I believe in a year or two we can have worked out and have printed in the records of the report some pretty reasonable answers as to why nut trees don't bear, or why they bear heavy crops on certain years and are off certain years.

Mr. Ward, I know you have observed this over a period of years. What, in your opinion, is the one factor that is more responsible for this alternate bearing of black walnuts?

Why Black Walnuts Fail to Bear Satisfactory Crops

When man or nature, and sometimes both, change the natural habits of a tree, most anything can happen. There are years when the black walnut sets very few fruits either on the seedling trees or trees of named varieties. Some few trees have alternate years of production, while other trees bear annually and some not at all. Good results and good crops may be expected only when several factors are normal and conditions favorable. After twenty years of keeping records and observations on nut trees and through correspondence with other growers, I consider the main reason for crop failure or light production to be climatic conditions and the weather for an entire year.

The black walnut produces a pistillate flower at the end of the present season's growth. The staminate flowers, or catkins, come from last year's wood. Good growing conditions are desirable for wood growth and fruit bud formation and any retarding of growth the previous season means little or no production. Winter injury to wood and bud, diseases or insects attacking the foliage, soil moisture, and summer temperatures will lower tree vitality. There are times when strong vigorous trees fail to fruit which could be due to a high or low carbohydrate-nitrogen balance. Soil type, plant food, age of tree, and location will have some influence on annual or even biennial production but yet are not the all important reasons for light crops.

The pollen of the black walnut is mostly wind borne as few insects ever visit the flowers and pollination is dependent on wind borne pollen. Trees planted in groups and close together are generally more productive than trees planted in orchard rows even as close as 40' by 40'. When the weather is cold and rainy during bloom, one should not expect much of a crop.

The staminate flowers opened early in Indiana the years of 1950, 1951, and 1952. The weather was more or less ideal during the time the catkins had elongated and about ready to shed pollen. This warm spell was followed by a fairly cool weather and considerable rain, which delayed the opening of the pistillate flowers, consequently the pollen dried and was lost before the pistil was receptive.

The few walnut trees in the University plantation have always had the best of care. The trees have been mulched, fertilized , sprayed, cultivated and seeded to grass with the grass clipped. The trees are some distance away from other seedling walnuts and a bit off the beaten path of the right direction of the spring winds. The varieties are Ohio, Stambaugh, Stabler, Rohwer, and Thomas. When the spring weather is balmy at flowering time, the trees bear a respectable crop but let the weather change to cool and moist and then that is the time one begins to think about calling up the sawmill to see if there is any need for some good walnut logs.

MR. MAGILL: That's a mighty good discussion. I see Mr. Ward has been observing walnut trees closer than I assumed he had.

Mr. Chase, I know you have seen a lot of things in Tennessee that you are not going to tell us about, but I suggest that you discuss some of the things you have observed about walnut trees bearing anywhere.

MR. CHASE: Alternate bearing has been a problem with fruits and nuts since time immemorial. I know a tremendous amount of work has been done with the apple, which has a definite biennial bearing habit. There have been all sorts of things tried to make it bear annual crops, and as far as I know, there has not been anything effective developed along that line. Of course, there are varieties of apples that tend to bear annual crops.

As Mr. Ward brought out--he took all my thunder, so I don't have much to say--a tree may set a heavy crop of nuts one year because frost or poor pollination the year before destroyed the crop so that a large amount of carbohydrates were built up in the tree. Now, the tree in producing a heavy crop of well filled nuts utilizes every bit of carbohydrates it has stored and can manufacture. While it is doing this the terminal bud is being formed for next year's crop, and if there isn't a sufficient amount of carbohydrates in the tree at that critical period, there is not likely to be a flower bud formed.

This is not limited just to walnuts, but occurs with nearly all fruits and nuts, with the possible exception of the chestnut.

We made a study which was reported in the 1946 report by Mr. Zarger in which he reported the bearing habits of some 135 trees over a 10-year period, and there were definite bearing cycles, or bearing habits. It was not always an on year followed by an off year, but possibly two years in a row, then nothing. There were some trees that went three years without a crop, then a crop. Very few, however, had annual crops, and the annual crops were heavy or moderately heavy, followed by what we consider a light crop.

These trees were scattered through seven states and, of course, conditions were not the same. They were all seedling trees, but careful records were kept on the bearing habits. There was a group of trees that could not be classified into any definite bearing habit. In those instances we suspected unfavorable weather at pollination time, but as a general rule, in our section I don't believe we are concerned with that factor.

The Thomas, which we can watch carefully in a nearby orchard, is definitely on one year and off the next. Quite a few are on one year and off two years. We haven't found any way to make that an annual crop, because when it sets a crop, it sets a bumper crop, and there is simply not enough food in the tree to set a sufficient number of fruit buds for the following year's crop. I am sure that a lot of you folks have observed this, and I think, Mr. Magill, that you might sound out some of them.

MR. MAGILL: Going back to an observation I made as a kid, money didn't grow in bushes around our place, and back in those days you could go out and kill ten rabbits and sell them for 8 cents apiece, and if you only used 4 cents apiece for ammunition, you have made 40 cents off of the deal and had worth of fun, and that was a good day's work. You remember those days, Pappy? Back in those same times, I used to get money out of hauling black walnuts to an old corn sheller and having people who didn't have an interest in the corn sheller sell them for 50 cents a bushel. That was also pin money. Come in mighty useful.

We had a certain group of trees on the farm I was raised on that bore every other year, and I can think of two fields where we rearranged the fences in such a way as to make pasture fields out of them, and two of those trees were where 15 or 20 cattle pastured. These were the only shade trees, and naturally they manured those trees. And I recall for a few years I was getting annual crops from them. Apparently they got something supplied by cattle that they didn't have otherwise. Others in the foothills of Kentucky, have come to the same conclusion.

I know a man who has pecan holdings in Alabama. He told me up to the time he got the farm the trees had a few blooms but wouldn't set pecans. He applied 15 mineral elements and claims to have got results from it. I have talked to at least three people in my travelling around who tried the same treatment on pecans, one in Georgia, one in Alabama and one in Mississippi. They reported that they had improved yield on pecans by using complete mineral fertilizer. That's in addition to nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

I am foolish enough to think that that nice, young orchard of Mrs. Weber's would make an excellent place to try it. I understand that the trees are not behaving as well as they should. I'd like for Ford Wilkinson to be made chairman of a committee to see that they are fertilized according to some kind of a schedule that could be worked out and do some observing. That is one of the few places I know of in the several states that would be as adequately laid out. I'd like to see a complete fertilizer including nine or ten mineral elements used.

I don't mean spend a lot of money, but you can do a lot of observing for relatively few dollars. I just throw that out as a hint.

I would like to open up this discussion. Mr. Bolten talked a while ago about things he was growing out of the ground, or out of minerals. Everything comes from the ground, and I reckon you'd say this Northern Nut Growers Association is a little like Topsy, it just developed, as the fellow about the weeds. He said they weren't created, they just come all at once. Now I believe that out of this Northern Nut Growers assembly here that we have got some keen observers that might have something on their minds they want to tell us about. Who wants to speak first?

MR. MAGILL: In that connection, one man in Kentucky got the same answer. He said about five years ago a cyclone came through there and blew the chimney off the house and uprooted a number of apple trees and leaned over three walnut trees, and he said they have borne five crops in succession. Now, this is the same story that you have got there.

MR. STOKE: I'd just like to remark that I think that's a sort of negative approach. I noticed a boy who had an apple tree that was about to die. He girdled it and got a tremendous crop of blossom. You probably have secured the same results. That is one of Nature's ways to perpetuate itself. But I think there a constructive angle in those trees that respond to nitrogenous fertilizer or manure. I believe the secret, if there is a secret, is that a tree in bearing a crop exhausts itself more or less. It recuperates the following year and then is ready to bear another crop. And the way to meet that situation is to fertilize heavily, especially with nitrogen, the season of the heavy crop so that you will have not only enough leaf growth to produce that crop, but to build up nutrients the following year. I believe that will help break the cycle and establish more regularity.

Some trees do that themselves; that is, they will bear a moderate crop every year. I have the Land walnut at home. It bears every year. Certain chestnuts will bear every year, not excessive crops, but Hobson bears a pretty good crop every year. I believe the secret of breaking that on-and-off cycle is to fertilize heavily the year of production not the year of non-production. If you apply nitrogen on the off year you produce perhaps an excess of wood growth that year and overbearing the following year.

MR. MAGILL: Referring to apples, any of you apple growers well know that the Golden Delicious and York Imperial grow crops in alternate years. Now, you come along with hormone sprays and take half or two-thirds of the young fruits off soon after the trees blossom and throw them into regular production. That's the same thing that you are talking about, Mr. Stoke. I never heard of anybody thinning walnuts. I don't know whether they do or not. A lot of things I don't know, but I don't know of anybody ever thinning walnuts, except squirrels.

MR. WARD: Last year a lady from Kokomo, Indiana, wrote me that she had a very fine walnut tree growing near Mr. Bolten's place in Greene County, and as far as she could remember that tree had borne an annual crop for the past 70 years. I wrote to Mr. Bolten asking him to investigate. If I remember correctly, these trees were grown in the poorest possible place. Is that right, Mr. Bolten?

MR. BOLTEN: Yes.

MR. WARD: There were two or three trees right close together that had a nice crop and the ground was covered with a lot of nice nuts which Mr. Bolten thought worth propagating, and he has a tree already started.

We have other varieties that we call the Saul, the Goose Creek and the Alley, which are all seedlings and which have produced almost every year with about the same size of crop.

In our own planting, at the University, we have tried a lot of things without telling anybody about it. Every once in a while the boys mow the orchard, and have bruised and barked a lot of these trees with no effect whatever on bearing. We have time and time again taken the Stambaugh, Ohio, Thomas, Stabler, and Aurora and have given them a good shot of fertilizer in the spring after a rain, and have produced wonderful growth in all of those years but still had only a light crop.

A few years ago some of the boys were spraying the apple orchard with Nu-Green and Urea at the rate of 5 pounds to 100 gallons of water, and had a little extra. They said, "Well, we don't like Ward's nut trees over there, we will put this stuff on them, and if it kills them, that's all right, and if they live, that's all right, too." They gave them some feeding throughout the summer and we haven't found any different results.

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