THE POSSIBILITIES OF NUT CULTURE IN UTAH

Leon D. Batchelor, Utah

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 in the mountain section who is interested in nuts and going to help the cause along.