EXPERIENCES AND EXPERIMENTS WITH THE PERSIAN WALNUT

A. C. Pomeroy, New York

When our secretary asked me to prepare a paper on this subject, I thought it would be very simple, but after making a beginning I found that about all I knew on nut culture was my own experiences—successes and failures—covering a period of about twenty-five years.

During the past year better data have been kept of the behavior of the Persian walnut trees under my observation, than in former years.

Hereafter it is my intention to keep a more detailed record of the time of the appearance of the nutlet blossoms of each tree, which is of the utmost importance to those interested in the growing of the Persian walnut in the North and East.

In order to keep a better record of each tree I have numbered the old original trees, planted by my father, from 1 to 7.

Nuts from each tree are here in jars numbered to correspond with the trees from which they were gathered and may be compared for variation in size, shape, thinness of shell and flavor.

It would be impossible to keep an exact record in pounds of the yield of any one tree per year. One thing against any such record, is that many visitors come to our farm every year to see the walnut trees and the pockets of some of them look suspiciously bulky on leaving. (An ordinary coat pocket will hold a quart, an overcoat pocket more than that and there are only thirty-two quarts in a bushel.)

The new orchard is just coming into bearing. At one end of it there is an old black walnut tree, and the young Persians that were planted near this tree began to bear first. Near the center of this eight-acre orchard we planted a butternut tree. This will, I think, help to fertilize the pistillate or nutlet blossoms on many of the trees.

Of the original trees five stand where they can have care and good cultivation. The other two were put in the lawn very close to some old shade trees where they can not be cultivated and are kept pretty well in the shade. The five cultivated trees produced this fall over twenty-three bushels. The nuts were measured on November 10 when there were twenty and a half bushels. The snow was so deep the other few bushels could not be gathered.

Besides the walnut trees mentioned there are perhaps twenty-five more planted in small plots about the farm. Nuts from some of these young trees are here and comparisons may be made with the nuts from the old trees.

To get an idea of how the English walnut has done in some parts of western New York the following replies to enquiries are quoted.

Wilson, one tree thirteen years old, one and one half bushels. Sybrandt, has twenty-five or more trees thirteen years old, some trees a bushel, others over a bushel and a half. Eighme, one tree fifteen or sixteen years old, one bushel. Trippency, one tree fifteen or sixteen years old, two bushels.

Nuts from some of the old and young trees were weighed. The results were somewhat surprising to me.

Tree No. 1 S. R. Long, well-filled nut, 48 to the pound.

Tree No. 1 N. R. Nut slightly pointed, well filled, 40 to the pound.

Tree No. 2 N. R. Nut nearly round, well filled, 37 to the pound.

Tree No. 5. Annual bearer, 64 to the pound.

The weighing was done on a druggist's scales about two weeks after gathering.

Those of you who have not seen a Persian walnut tree in full foliage, have something to live for. Imagine a tree, that was a nut in the spring of 1877, its branches now spreading full fifty feet, its topmost bough fully that far from the ground, its trunk measuring seventy-six inches around, well above the earth.

Imagine such a tree in its foliage of dense, dark glossy green, its branches loaded with fruit, sometimes actually touching the ground.

The question is sometimes asked what is such a tree worth for cabinet use? I don't know, and I don't care. What I do know is that those five trees produced well upward of forty dollars each this year.

Our markets in western New York are good. The folks that use nuts as a daily food have increased greatly in the past few years. Niagara County has three cities, Erie County, adjoining, also has three cities. The population of Buffalo is about 450,000; improved highways and gasolene trucks have put us within an hour and a half of all these six cities.

While there are hundreds of young Persian walnut trees, just coming into bearing, in some of the counties of western New York, the supply of home-grown nuts will probably never fill the demand.

Professor Lake paid the farm a short visit this past summer and told of his grafting. I think he said he had a loss of 90 per cent. We beat that a little as our loss was 100 per cent.

The failure in grafting was due, I think, to the scions not being cut early enough.

Budding in August was done by budders expert with fruit trees. A Jones budding tool was used. Nearly all the buds took.

We do not have much trouble with disease or insects.

We have had no trouble to speak of with worms. About ten years ago a few nests of the tent caterpillar were cut off and burned.

Some 18 or 20 years ago all, or nearly all, of the nuts dropped in June. I do not know what was the matter.

In 1906 the ends of some of the branches on the older trees turned brown and died back a few inches.

These were cut off and burned. We had but few nuts that year.

In fertilizing have used barnyard manure. When it was used it was at times applied too freely, perhaps, as some of the young trees put forth a growth of six feet in one season. I do not think it well to force them too much. The fertilizing should be done in the winter or early spring.

Trimming may be done at any time a branch appears that needs removing.

There is one pretty good sized tree on the farm with black walnut stem and Persian walnut top. Some horticulturists seem to think that this kind of a tree is hardier. My observations are that there is not a bit of difference. This tree and another on a near-by farm are the only two I know of with a black walnut stem and a Persian top, in my section.

The U. S. Department of Agriculture has issued a bulletin "Soil Survey of Niagara County, N. Y." By referring to this, I find that the soils that have produced thrifty, and prolific Persian walnut trees are, Dunkirk loam, Dunkirk sandy loam, Dunkirk silt loam, Clyde sandy loam and clay loam.

The winters of western New York are frequently quite severe. The winter of 1911-12 was a very severe one, zero weather prevailing most of the time and frequently it was way below zero for days. No injury was done to the Persian walnut trees and a good crop of nuts was harvested in the fall of 1912.

In May, 1913, on the nights of the 11th and 12th it was so cold that ice formed an eighth of an inch, or more, in thickness. The staminate catkins on the Persian walnut trees were fairly well developed and it was thought the nuts were gone for this year surely, but the last of May the pistillate blossoms came out, the staminates matured and the results have already been told you.

I think that Persian walnut trees pay better than apples, and that there is no danger of an oversupply.

The cost for labor in caring for the trees and in harvesting the crop is very much less than for any other fruit crop. No spraying and no picking are necessary.

The cost of production is slight, yet the demand and prices for this nut have been steadily increasing for several years.

The Chairman: I would like to have a good discussion of this paper, because it seems to me that in all the activities of the Northern Nut Growers Association the Persian walnut offers the highest possibilities. The Pacific coast people and southern people have always thought that only the hickory or black walnut could be raised in the northern parts of the country, and now we find that the Persian walnut also does well there. The Secretary has sent out a letter recently asking for information about the Persian walnut trees in the vicinity of each person addressed. This letter was gotten out for the reason that in the culture of the Persian walnut the Pacific coast people have distanced us, and it is probable that we have not learned the possibilities of these splendid nuts in the East. We have a few very fine varieties of these eastern nuts, and it looks as if, by use of these varieties, the eastern part of this country can produce these nuts in as large quantities as the western. Mr. Pomeroy originated the walnut bearing his name, and we have another nut that offers very good promise, and I believe the originator is here this morning. Mr. Rush we would like to hear from you.

Mr. Rush: I am satisfied that Persian walnut culture can be made just as profitable on the Atlantic coast as on the Pacific and in France. We have varieties that have stood a temperature of twenty-three degrees below zero.

I have discovered another variety in Lancaster. This tree was brought in from Germany about thirty-five years ago and it has turned out to be an extremely valuable variety. I have seen these nuts selling in the open market at fifty cents a pound. As regards propagation of the Persian walnut, of course the black walnut is the most common variety on which to propagate. Another stock is the Japan walnut, in a sense better than the black for grafting. It has a better lateral root system and is not so fierce in going down to the center of the earth. Its root system is magnificent. Several trees budded on this stock a year ago last August and transplanted in November the same year, had a growth this summer of over six feet from the bud, showing that there must certainly be remarkable vitality in the Japanese roots. I have a young tree thirteen years old budded on black walnut that produced twenty-one nuts this summer. I have a seedling about ten years old which didn't have one catkin bloom. But a tree of the Rush variety, so named for me by Mr. Jones, the first propagator, stood about forty feet away from the first, and at the end of the season this seedling tree produced sixty finely developed nuts. This seedling tree, however, had a great many pistillate blossoms, which received pollen from the neighboring variety that was prolific in staminate bloom. It would seem to be an advantage for a seedling Persian walnut to have a good pollenizer in its company.

Professor Smith: I was struck by Mr. Pomeroy's statement that after apparent killing of the staminate bloom by frost the pistillate blossoms appeared and he had a crop. Evidently he got fertilization from some outside source. The Persian walnut in the eastern part of the United States is like many other trees in that its trouble does not arise from susceptibility to winter cold, for when it is dormant it appears to stand great cold. The trouble with the Persian walnut is its tendency to start growing at the first approach of warm weather and if the cold comes later it may kill the tree. Mr. Pomeroy's farm there near the shores of the lake has an immunity from sudden changes of temperature and therefore his trees are not likely to make growth which will be caught by late fall or early spring frosts. Unquestionably he can grow Persian walnuts better there than can be done five hundred to a thousand miles further south. It is also a well-known fact that one of the best of peach and apple regions is along this lake shore. There are many other Persian walnut trees growing in different localities east of the Mississippi, but nobody seems to think them worth propagating because they winter kill at times. Yet seedlings of the hardiest trees often do it. A new variety of the tree has been discovered which is wonderful in that, whereas the ordinary Persian walnut tree comes into leaf rather early, this tree comes into leaf in June when cherries are ripe. I have seen similar trees in France. I have no doubt there are ten or fifteen different varieties of this tree growing unappreciated in this part of the country. These particular trees we do know about happen to belong to gentlemen who are propagating them for our benefit and we owe them our thanks; but I have no doubt there are many other trees equally as valuable growing in the Eastern States. I have no doubt that the experience of Mr. Rush could be duplicated, in discovering right near him in his own town something better than he had ever known before. We need reports on all these trees.

Mr. Rush: In connection with Mr. Smith's remarks as to late vegetating varieties, it may be that this feature is not altogether desirable. I have been in correspondence with a gentleman in Colfax, Washington, who has some late vegetating varieties and he tells me that he lost his whole crop. They were caught by a frost at the end of the season before they had fully matured.

Mr. Davis: Mr. C. A. Sober has, on his farm in central Pennsylvania, about five hundred Persian walnut trees and has had them for ten years. He has not been able to get a nut. Every year they freeze back. The trees live but they freeze back. I don't know whether this is because they start too early or not.

Professor Smith: I do not know that there is any better nut than these which we are now propagating, but I think the chances are ninety-nine to one against our having found the best walnut trees for this region.

The Chairman: I think Professor Smith's point is well taken. We are just starting in this business. I want to get the experiences of men from different parts of the country. Is Mr. Stabler here?

Mr. Stabler: Thirty years ago three trees, probably seedlings were planted in our neighborhood. One is on my father's farm, one is on my uncle's farm, and one is on our farm. The one on our farm, I think, has never borne a nut. My uncle's has borne many times, although an apple tree and a cedar tree are very near it. This walnut tree comes out so very late in the spring that no spring frost catches it. It is in Montgomery County and we often have late spring frosts there. The nuts are all ripe in the fall too before the frost comes.

Professor Smith: Mr. Stabler told me that this is the fifteenth successive crop from this tree.

The Chairman: This is certainly a very important point—the maturity of these trees. It is the general impression that the Persian walnut will not mature in certain sections of the country, but as a fact there are certain varieties that will mature anywhere in the country. We have similar evidence in the experience of the pecan growers. The Indiana pecan is dormant later than the southern varieties. This is true of the hardy peach also which comes out later in the spring and is ripe sooner in the fall than the southern varieties. These seem to have accommodated themselves to the climate.

Professor McHatton: In Georgia we are prone to be hurt by the late spring frosts—that is our great trouble. The other day there was sent into the office a number of specimens of the Persian walnut, said to be from a seedling grown at Sharp, Georgia, in the apple country just below Chattanooga, at an elevation of eight hundred to a thousand feet, and it gets cold up there—they have heavy freezing every winter. This tree began bearing at seven or eight years, the owner said, and has borne a crop every year for the past seven or eight years, and he had several losses of fruit crops from late spring frosts during that period. The nut was very well filled and of fair size. If any one is interested sufficiently and will write to me as soon as I get back to the college I will send the name of the grower. I do not recommend it as I have never seen more than a dozen of the nuts. This was of interest to me, because I have not been recommending the Persian walnut there on account of the late spring frosts, but now it looks as if there was a chance of our getting into the walnut game ourselves.

Mr. Pomeroy: A prominent expert who came to the farm once said to me that the Persian or English walnut came to this country through two routes: one through Greece, Italy and Spain, and taken by the Spaniards to Mexico and southern California, and the other route through Germany and England into the United States from the north. He said he would rather have his walnut trees come from the northern route trees than the southern.

Professor Smith: Any one who has a good tree ought to write to our secretary. I hope everybody will report these trees. The information will be published in bulletin form and sent out to every member of the Association. I fully believe that this information gathered and disseminated will greatly assist in developing the walnut industry in the eastern part of the United States.

Mr. Frost: Mr. Pomeroy said that the pruning might be done at any time of the year. I pruned a walnut tree one spring and it very nearly bled to death.

Mr. Pomeroy: It seems to me that I have always pruned at any time. It might be that when the sap is just nicely started—just before the tree starts and the buds swell—it might not be wise to do that. I suppose that the nut trees might bleed then the same as grape vines and certain other plants and trees. I thought it never did any harm.

Mr. Frost: It very nearly killed mine. They were big trees, too.

The Chairman: I had just such an experience as that with grape vines. We found that if grapes are pruned at a certain time in the spring they will bleed profusely, and sometimes actually bleed to death. I never had any experience with walnuts, but with vines we prune in the fall just as soon as they are dormant. At that time the energies of the plant are at a minimum and you can prune more safely than at any other time. As we go on toward spring the moisture becomes greater and the sap starts, so if you prune late in the spring there is great danger of injury to all plants. If you prune in the fall you have no trouble.

Mr. Wile: I would like to know if any one has had experience with California varieties here in the East.

Professor Van Deman: Professor Close has had more than any one else. I have also heard of some in Florida.

Professor Lake: We have had three years' experience; we have had also the experience of others who have had them a longer time than that. Some three years ago we grafted a number of California varieties on the eastern black. In view of the eastern conditions, these are all making splendid growth—some of them made a three-foot growth last year, some a five and one-half foot growth this year. They went through last winter splendidly; they are holding back finely in the spring and we had no trouble with spring frosts on the grafted portions, even though many of the seedlings were injured.

The Chairman: Will the Persian walnut fertilize itself under eastern conditions?

Professor Smith: I think we will have to trust to outside fertilization by the black walnut or butternut. They all bloom at the same time. One fertilizing tree will do, but it is better to have more than one because sometimes it might turn out that the staminate catkins came a few days too early or too late to fertilize the nut. The more trees you have, the better the chances; the more trees in a group the better. The reason a five or six-year-old Persian walnut tree does not bear many walnuts is that there are no staminate catkins. It takes old wood to produce them. There is not enough old wood.

Mr. Stabler: The Stabler walnut which I have just mentioned, bloomed from the tenth to the twenty-fifth of June. The black walnuts of that neighborhood all came out from a month to six weeks earlier than that, and not a single black walnut tree had blossoms on in that neighborhood, nor a single Persian walnut at the time the Stabler tree blossomed. I believe I am fairly well acquainted there and there was not a single other tree had catkins on at that time, and yet that tree bore a good crop of catkins and a large number of pistillate blossoms and later a good crop of nuts which is fairly good evidence that it must have fertilized itself.

The Chairman: We would like to continue this discussion, but we have another paper that bears on the subject, and I think it will bring out some points in connection with it.