THE PERSIAN WALNUT IN CALIFORNIA.

Abstract of a Lecture by Professor E. R. Lake, Washington, D. C.

The Persian walnut industry of the United States is confined, practically, to four counties in Southern California, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange. The territory covered is, in a general way, fifty by one hundred and fifty miles in extent, though, of course, only a very small part of this area is planted, and that really the best land in the territory. This industry which yields practically two and one-half millions of dollars annually to the growers is about thirty-five years old, and at present involves the consideration of one variety, the Santa Barbara Softshell. While it is true that there are about seventy-five named varieties now grown in the country, the Santa Barbara constitutes the commercial crop and will for some time to come, though effort is being made to find a more desirable variety.

During the past ten years a troublesome pest in the form of a fungous disease which attacks the young twigs and young nuts has awakened an interest in other varieties and at present much work is being done with a view to finding one or more varieties that shall be fully resistant to this foe. At present the University of California, which is the directive factor in this investigation, is recommending the trial of half a dozen of the more promising varieties or forms that have been developed through selection, or chance, in the local orchards. As a result of the effect of this trouble, the crop output has increased very slightly during the past decade, though the area of planted trees has increased very much, hence it is very apparent that some other varieties must be found; for it has been quite conclusively proven that none of the means so effectively used against the fungous troubles that affect other orchard crops are of any avail in this case. When it is noted that there has been practically no advance in the improvement of varieties since the origin of the Franquette and Mayette about one hundred and fifty years ago, except the accidental appearance of the Santa Barbara which was produced presumably from a nut from Chili (!) in 1868 on the grounds of Joseph Sexton, Goleta, California, it is evident that our nuciculturists have been indifferent, especially as to the possibilities of extending the area of production.

Speaking more particularly of California walnut growing, it may be said: The best of soils are selected for this crop; the trees are being planted from forty to fifty feet apart; the best and most common advice is to plant budded or grafted trees, and so far as this advice has been followed the Placentia, an improved Santa Barbara, has been used, though in the newer districts where efforts are being made, with apparent success, to develop this industry, several other varieties are being used, such as the Wiltz, Franquette, Mayette, Eureka, Chase, Prolific, Meylan, Concord, Treyve and Parisienne. Thus far this work is experimental, and only time will determine the success and value of it.

The crop, as with all orchard crops on the Pacific Coast, is cultivated intensively, clean tillage being given, followed by cover crops and in some cases fertilizers accompanied with intercrops.

The trees require very little pruning, and though formerly the heads were started high, they are now formed low and the primary branches trained to ascend obliquely, thus facilitating tillage operations, and, in this respect, even improving upon the high head with spreading or even drooping main branches. While the more progressive planters favor trees one year from the bud, which have been put upon two year old stock, some still prefer two year old tops. Stocks are preferably California black, northern form. This is a large and vigorous tree, while the southern form is often or perhaps better, usually, a large shrub or small tree.

The remarkable behavior of the Vrooman orchard at Santa Rosa, in which there are sixty acres of grafted Franquettes, has been the chief means of stimulating the very extensive plantings that have been made during the past five or six years in the Pacific Northwest. This is the largest orchard of grafted nuts of a single type variety in the United States and is a most excellent example of what follows grafting. The nuts are exceedingly uniform, and large size. They are marketed in the natural color and are especially attractive, particularly when of a reddish-golden tinge.

The trees begin to bear at five or six years, though many instances are recorded where two year olds have borne a few nuts. Usually only a few pounds per year are produced prior to twelve years, after that the yield increases rapidly until at sixteen years the trees will average approximately fifty pounds or more per tree under favorable soil, tillage, and climatic conditions, providing the trees are of selected varieties of good bearing qualities.

One tree, known as the Payne tree, top worked on to a native black, has a record of yielding as much as seven hundred and twelve pounds in one season, though it is not fair to use these figures in estimating the yield per acre of seventeen trees.

While the walnut has received little attention in the Eastern United States, there are sufficient data at hand now to warrant the statement that several meritorious varieties may be successfully grown in favorable localities. These nuts, though not rated as high as the best imported nuts or the choice California product, would successfully compete with the foreign nuts which are now rated as replacement nuts by the dealers in California's best grade. It is not safe to endorse the view that any waste or abandoned land may be converted into successful walnut orchards, though such lands may in due time produce trees that will bear nuts. A first-class walnut orchard can only be produced upon first-class land, deep, fertile soil, a low water table, an open subsoil, with choice varieties, grafted upon the most suitable stock and then given first-class tree-care.

Professor Lake: I think a man now is making a tremendous mistake who thinks for a moment of advising the planting of seedling walnuts. We are bound to meet the problem of grafted fruit right away. The success in grafting in Washington this year has been such as to make us feel certain that we may safely advise budding yearling stocks and expecting a return of from seventy to ninety per cent of successful sets. Stocks giving best success in budding are California black. About two weeks after the budding is done, the tops are cut off two inches above, and allowed to bend over and protect the buds; and in the West, where they have intense sunlight, they have found it necessary to cover the buds with paper sacks. The budding which has given the largest success is hinge budding, a kind that I haven't seen discussed generally in the East. Instead of being a T at one end, it is a T at both ends. There is a horizontal cut across, another below, and a split between. The buds are taken preferably from the last year's wood. We attempt to take the wood away from the bud, with the exception of that little spongy part that runs up into the bud, and is the core.

Mr. Pomeroy: You speak of the hulling. Do they have to hull the Persian walnuts?

Professor Lake: In many instances, especially in dry seasons, or in those sections where water is not particularly abundant. Ordinarily, hulling is avoided by irrigating just preceding the time of falling. Frequently the growers of large acreages say that it is cheaper to run them all through the huller.

Mr. Littlepage: What would you prophesy about the average seedling Persian walnut tree as to success and quality of nut?

Professor Lake: I was led to think that all that was necessary to do was to plant the walnuts, because most of our authorities of twenty years ago said the walnut would come true to seed. I think out of several hundred trees planted throughout the state, and many we planted ourselves, not a seedling came true. I should think, normally, we should be very much dissatisfied in ten years from planting seedlings. As soon as anyone buds these with Franquette, Parisienne, Concord, Rush, Pomeroy, and others, I am satisfied he will not want to chance it with seedlings.

Mr. Littlepage: This dissatisfaction that may result from setting seedling walnuts, such as Rush, Nebo, Pomeroy, and others, would be just as great, perhaps, as the dissatisfaction resulting in the West, would it not?

Professor Lake: I can't see any reason, but that if there are present any of the native trees, they are bound to cross-fertilize. In California we have the Royal hybrid produced at over a mile and a half distance from any known American blacks. The Royal is a cross between the American black and the California black.

Mr. Littlepage: I don't suppose it would be reasonable to expect that there is a Persian walnut in the northern or eastern United States far enough from some native black to render it safe.

Professor Lake: I should hardly think so. Even if it is, I question whether a nut of real merit will come true to seed.

President Morris: Is it true that even from single type orchards the nuts, while coming fairly true to seed, would give trees widely different in bearing propensities?

Professor Lake: That is very true in this Vrooman orchard that has been developed to the very best possible advantage. There are trees that haven't borne a nut to make them worth while, others have been remarkably vigorous. From these, a few people, knowing of their real merits, are propagating select strains for their own use. They have fifteen or sixteen years' record. I question, if you take a hundred Franquettes from the Vrooman orchard miscellaneously, whether you would get more than ten per cent that would be really as good as the Vrooman.

President Morris: In California I went along the coast this summer from Los Angeles to Oregon and Washington, and looked over orchards. I find that in the West, as in the East, the tendency is for the Persian walnut to store up an undue amount of starch in the kernel. It is apt also to store up an undue proportion of tannin, and to be insipid. That means that in this country we must develop our own type of walnut, and it is quite the exception to find among any Persian walnuts growing on the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast or in the middle of the country walnuts that are free from this tendency to astringency, to insipidity, and to toughness.

When I was on the Pacific Coast looking over specimens in one agricultural collection, a young woman who was showing the collection said, "And here is a lot of Franquettes, and Chabertes, and Mayettes, and Parisiennes that we imported; and do you know, we found our walnuts very much better than those?" I said to her, "Don't deceive yourself in this matter. This self-deception is a mistake. The thing to do is not to make that kind of a decision, but really to develop in our own country walnuts just as good as those, but not like them."

This was exemplified in a group of walnut raisers. One would say, "Here is a fine walnut that I raised." The other would say, "Yes, that looks pretty good, but you have got to hire a good talker to sell it." Another would say, "Isn't this a fine thin shelled nut?" And the same thing would be said. Now, the whole conversation of that meeting was to the effect that "you have got to have a good talker to sell it." Those people send their good talkers all over the country, and they do sell the walnuts; and it is going to kill the walnut market, unless this is stopped. Those points are ones upon which I would like to have an expression of opinion from Mr. Lake.

Professor Lake: I may say that the western knowledge of the walnut is based very largely upon the character of the Santa Barbara Softshell, and the people in the West are fully satisfied that the Pacific Coast walnuts are the best in the world. I am thoroughly of their belief, too. I agree thoroughly with the doctrine that we have got to improve our own varieties, and that is being done in the best way that we know at present,—by cross-fertilizing and growing the seedlings. A number have been developed the past few years. It is very true that the general public's taste, however, is not up yet to the connoisseur's in this matter, and I am satisfied that the ordinary grade of walnut is going to meet the public demand for a long time yet. The Santa Barbara Softshell will sell to the American public for good profitable prices for some time, and in the meantime, the men who are really wideawake and have a knowledge of the situation are going to endeavor to improve the home strains. I can't see that we can hope for very much from France, for during the last two years the real Mayette of France has been imported, because we have trees bearing in Santa Clara Valley a Mayette as near like the Mayette of Europe as it is possible to make them. The French have not been particularly anxious for us to get their best strains.

President Morris: In this connection, let me say I have seen Mayette, Chaberte, Parisienne,—the best European walnuts—growing in this country, and in this country they do precisely like the best European grapes,—that is, they give us a different product. Imported grafted stock will take from our soil those elements which make an astringent, tough, insipid nut. We have got to recognize it. Don't let us fail to go on record as calling attention to that fact. That means if we import the very best European kinds and plant these, we are going to have the same records as with grapes.

Professor Lake: This matter of quality is of considerable moment to the growers out there. Last year I took occasion to write five of the leading dealers in New York, like Parke and Tilford. They said in their letters of reply, "We consider the quality as varying from season to season. Some seasons we get the California product better than the European product; other seasons it is just the other way." It leads me to think seasonal variation has a great deal to do with the walnut, possibly. In some cases even the large dealers are not yet agreed that the American product is not yet good enough for the American market.

President Morris: Shall we say that nuts for the connoisseur should not be bleached?

Professor Lake: Modern bleaching consists in running the nuts through a current of salt. It is applied in such a way that it does not do any injury whatever to the flavor or the kernel, unless possibly salting the kernel in cracked nuts would be considered injurious. The bleaching is beautiful. They are not over bleached. They use six pounds of salt to a thousand gallons of water, and run a current of ninety-five volts. It is sprayed on to the nuts as they pass through a revolving cylinder, the spray coming on in a fine mist. As they pass over the cylinder, they are graded and ventilated, and put into sacks. That is after they have been dried. They are ready in about twenty-two hours to be sacked and delivered. The old method of processing in soda and lime and sulphur certainly did injure them.

Mr. Pomeroy: I am just a short distance from Niagara Falls and Buffalo. When any of you are in that section, I would like to have you come and see my trees. There are the seven year old trees my father started, and the orchard is of five or six acres. Some of the seedlings are in bearing now. I have a good many black walnuts in nursery rows, and I am going to begin grafting and budding. One thing I came for was to get information in regard to budding and grafting. In regard to the caring for the trees, it is a great pleasure to watch a tree grow and get it in shape.

Professor Craig: It seems to me that out of the very interesting discussion we have had on this question of the Persian walnut, and out of the discussion which has arisen from the papers of Mr. Littlepage and others on native nuts, we have obtained some very general principles which should be emphasized at this time. The one large principle that I want to call attention to is the principle which says that, in order to develop fruits—and we will include nuts in that general group—which shall be useful to the American public, we shall have to develop them under American soil and atmospheric conditions. In other words, the importation per se of European stock of whatever kind is altogether likely to meet with failure. This is the history of American fruit growing from the beginning. The very first beginning of fruit culture in this country was the importation of European fruits, and these uniformly failed. Success came when American colonists began to grow American seedlings. The fact that these have prevailed is shown by the percentage of American fruits the large orchardist produces at the present time. Today nearly ninety-nine per cent of our apples are of American origin. The condition of today means success; the condition of a hundred years ago meant failure.

In this Persian walnut business, I think success is going to come to us through such work as Mr. Pomeroy and other interested amateurs are doing throughout the country, in selecting a good type of seedling here and there and growing seedlings from it. This homely old method of producing new types through seedling selection is, I think, going to do a great deal to ameliorate conditions the country over. I simply wanted to impress that idea, that if we nut growers are going to do something to help the nut interests of the country, we can do it by planting nuts and selecting nuts from the best types, again taking the best nuts from the best types and planting them; thus by keeping on selecting, we shall win success in the future.