Part 37 (2/2)

MR. SALZER: Wear rubbers.

MR. CHASE: We are not going to have any rain tomorrow.

(He was right.--Ed.)

We have a short paper here that I have asked Dr. Anthony to summarize for us, ”Experiences in Nut Growing Near Lake Erie,” by Ross P. Wright, Erie, Pennsylvania.

DR. ANTHONY: Mr. Wright is a very interesting man and has a very interesting plantation. He is a manufacturer and fortunately has a son who is mature and married and as interested in the work as he, so there is a continuity that we are pretty sure of.

Experiences in Nut Growing Near Lake Erie

ROSS PIER WRIGHT, Erie, Pennsylvania

This report should be made by my son Richard Wright. He is in charge of the farm but is on a trip to Europe with his family and will not return in time for your meeting.

The farm is located in the Chautauqua Grape Belt; due to the proximity of Lake Erie, which acts as a heat reservoir, it is not as a rule bothered by the late frosts in the Spring or early frosts in the Fall, this making it a very satisfactory climate for Concord grapes. Peaches are also grown commercially.

The village of Westfield is located on the main road between Erie and Buffalo, and the Wright family has lived there for the past 136 years.

We have several hundred acres and really started the endeavor more with the idea of seeing if nuts might be profitably grown, without any idea of going into the nut business.

In 1915, 35 years ago, we planted a three acre plot with several varieties of nut trees obtained from nurseries. They were black walnuts, hickories, hazel nuts, pecans, English walnuts, and j.a.panese heartnuts.

The black walnuts are native of Westfield and the trees we planted have done well. The only hickories that survived were two Siers hickories. We did not think much of them until recently as they did not fill out any too well, but the last three or four years they have for some reason decided to fill better. Due to the extremely thin sh.e.l.l they are very easily cracked and at the moment we think quite highly of these Siers hickories.

We have a nut cracker made by the Dazey Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri, which costs $5.00 or $6.00. It is very effective with the Siers but does not crack thick sh.e.l.led hickories very well. On the other hand it is ideal for pecans and English walnuts.

The filberts in this field are not very satisfactory, with the exception of the Winkler hazel. These usually bear very well. The trouble with the filberts is that the catkins are quite p.r.o.ne to winter kill but the Winkler hazel seems to be more hardy. There again we think more of them since we have used the Dazey Nut Cracker. The Winkler nuts are rather small and have quite a hard sh.e.l.l and if a hammer is used it is quite likely to crush the kernel.

The English walnuts we planted at that time were not of a hardy type and were p.r.o.ne to winterkill. There are really only two stunted trees left.

The pecans do not winterkill but the nuts do not fill.

The j.a.panese heartnuts we planted were successful. One of them we consider very satisfactory and is worthy of propagation. We call it the Lobular heartnut.

In the Spring of 1923, 27 years ago, we obtained a half bushel of heartnuts from our representative in j.a.pan and planted them. Three years later we interplanted some of the trees in a four acre field in which we were planting as permanent trees some Snyder and Thomas black walnuts.

Reporting on that field as it is today we will say that these walnuts and heartnuts, up to five years ago, bore very well indeed and the nuts filled properly, but the last few years the nuts have not filled properly although they have received nitrate of soda. We are somewhat in a quandry as to the reason for it.

Adjoining the field is a black walnut tree, probably 150 years old, which always bore nuts and they have always filled up to the last few years. In this field where the majority of the seedling heartnuts have been planted there was the usual interesting difference in the nuts.

Some were of the true heartnut variety, some had the rough s.h.a.ggy sh.e.l.l and shape of a b.u.t.ternut and others were round and looked like English walnuts. Some of the heartnut trees have developed a disease called witches'-broom or bunch disease. There does not, to date, seem to be any cure for it. We used some heavy applications of zinc sulphate and thought the trouble had improved but the improvement seems to have been only temporary.

In this field also are the trees which Clarence Reed designated as the Wright heartnut and the Westfield heartnut.

In 1933 to 1935, 15 to 17 years ago, we grafted about 35 hickories with various varieties. They were grafted in a grove of hickories which were on our farm and which were perhaps eight inches in diameter. This endeavor did not prove to be much of a success. Some of the grafts died after a year or two and the others which have continued to live do not appear to bear to any extent. We would have to mark that particular endeavor down as very close to a failure.

Perhaps if we had given the grafting endeavor more attention we might have had different results but we are in the manufacturing business in Erie, Pennsylvania, and really look upon the Westfield, New York, farm as a type of relaxation. In those years 1933 to 1935 industry was experiencing a major distress and I am afraid most of our attention was given to our factory rather than our farm. In fact, that situation applies very largely to all of our nut endeavors. There is an old Scotch saying ”The eye of the master fattens the kine,” and during the last 15 or 20 years when we in industry have experienced a tremendous depression followed by a war it has meant that those interested have had to watch their manufacturing plants to the detriment of their other interests regardless of how much they regretted it.

<script>