Growing Nuts in the North Part 7

Weschcke._]

Apricot

If it were not that an apricot is a nut as well as a fruit, I should hesitate to include a description of my work with it. But the apricot seed has a rich kernel which, in many countries, for example, China, is used as a subst.i.tute for the almond to which it is closely related.

It was in 1933 that my aunt, Margaret Weschcke, told me of an apricot tree growing in a yard on the Mississippi River bluff in St. Paul and said to be bearing fruit. I was quite skeptical until I saw the tree and also saw fruit from it which had been preserved by the woman who owned it. Convinced of the hardiness of the tree, I was anxious to obtain scionwood but it was not until late that winter that I received permission to do so. It happened that a truck had broken off a large branch from the tree while delivering coal, and the owner very reasonably decided that taking a few twigs from it would not hurt it any more. I not only took the small branches that she was willing to sacrifice from her tree but also as many as possible from the branch which had been torn off, as its terminals were still in a fresh condition.

I grafted these scions on hybrid plum trees where they took hold readily, and in 1938, they began to bear prolifically. The apricots, which I have named Harriet, in honor of my mother, are a fine-flavored fruit, medium in size. Their cheeks are a mottled red with raised surfaces. Their pits are well-formed and fairly edible. Although the parent tree died the winter I took scions from it, my grafts have proved quite hardy, having received no injury when temperatures as low as 47 below zero have occurred. Since the parent tree died because its roots were severely frozen, it would seem that the top of the tree, in this case, was more hardy than the root system. This does occur sometimes, although it is unusual.

In developing the factor of hardiness further in this apricot variety, I have taken advantage of something I had observed about other fruit trees. When one combines parts of two trees by grafting, it is a simple thing to select a hardy root stock from the available plants, just as I selected hardy plum stock on which to graft my apricot scions. This is not always possible in choosing scionwood, however, since scionwood is usually selected for such reasons as the quality of its fruit. It may happen that the top part of a tree is limited in its climatic scope because of its inability to withstand precipitate or otherwise unfavorable temperatures. Having observed that certain grafted varieties of fruit trees, such as the Wealthy apple, for instance, have gradually come to be planted much farther north than they originally were, I reasoned that this was because only the hardiest of them survived and these hardy ones therefore became the mother blocks for future grafting.

This was an inescapable procedure which acted as a method of bud selection. I therefore a.s.sumed that by a careful choice of the hardiest among surviving twigs of the most recent graft of the Harriet apricot, when particularly severe winter weather had caused some injury, I could induce extra-hardiness in future grafts.

I also believe that I have added to the hardiness factor of the apricot by making frequent grafts. It is my theory that the root stock is able to exert some influence over the top other than mere maintenance of life. By frequently uniting a hardy stock with a less hardy top, I think that the individuality of the top part may be somewhat broken down and the extra characteristic of hardiness added to it. After the fifth re-graft of this apricot made in eight years, I am convinced by its appearance and behavior that it is capable of becoming a reliable apricot for the region around St. Paul. Today the apricot still exists grafted on plum at my nursery at River Falls, Wisconsin, and the weakness of the tree seems to be in the union between the top and the plum stock. If this union were not so corky and large and succulent it might be less injured by our winters; therefore it is quite apparent that the plum is not a congenial stock for an apricot, at least it does not produce a satisfactory union. I am now making tests with this same variety by grafting it on more hardy apricot seedling stock such as the Prof. N. E. Hansen of Brookings, South Dakota, introduces.

Chapter 11

PESTS AND PETS

The pocket gopher is an herbivorous animal which attains approximately the size of a gray squirrel. It has a sleek, grey-brown coat of fur which is almost as fine as that of the mole and would, I think, make a good quality fur except that the skin is too tender to stand either sewing or the wear that fur coats have to undergo. I learned this by trapping them and having a furrier try them out, as I knew that the quickest way to get rid of a pest is to eat it or use its hide. Since I found its hide to be of no practical value, I enjoined my troop of Boy Scouts, a willing group of boys, to carry out my suggestions that they skin and prepare one of these animals in a stew. Gophers are purely herbivorous and I thought they should be quite edible, but as I am a strict vegetarian myself, I had to depend on them to make this experiment. The boys followed instructions up to the point of cooking, but by that time the appearance of the animal had so deprived them of their enthusiasm and appet.i.tes that I had no heart to urge them to continue. I am still of the opinion, however, that to meat-eating people, the pocket gopher would taste as good as squirrel or pigeon.

The first introduction I had to the devastating work that these animals can do in an orchard was when I was working among my young apple and plum trees one spring. I noticed that the foliage was turning yellow on many of them and upon investigation I found that the trees were very loose in the ground. At first I thought that planting operations and heaving of the ground by frost in the spring might be the cause, but in testing the looseness of one of these trees, I found that I could pull it out of the ground easily. There I saw what appeared to be the marks of an axe. I was completely convinced that I had personal enemies who went around nights chopping off the roots of my trees, for I knew that most of my neighbors were completely out of sympathy with my tree cultivation. In fact, farmers living in that section of the country were always poking fun at my nut tree plantings and orchard work, for their idea of what was proper on a farm was a treeless field of plowed ground.

As I thought of all these things, I pulled up many other trees; in fact, there were dozens that were chopped off so that they could be completely pulled out. Others still had one or two roots clinging to the main trunk and these I carefully replanted so that they would continue to live and grow.

Not long after the tragic day on which I found all these ravaged trees, I noticed, winding in and out close to the young orchard trees, the mounds which pocket gophers make when they tunnel under the ground. I followed some of these by digging into them with a shovel, and discovered that they led to the roots of trees, the very trees that had been chopped off and killed. My enemies were not human after all.

Sending for a pamphlet from the U. S. Department of Agriculture, I studied the material given about pocket gophers and their habits. I then began their systematic eradication, using about twelve steel muskrat traps. I succeeded in trapping, in one season, over thirty of them, at a time when they were so prolific and their holes so numerous that I could not drive a horse through the orchard without danger of breaking one of its legs. I also used poisoned grains and gases but I do not recommend them. Trapping is the only method in which one obtains actual evidence of elimination. It took me many years to force the gophers out of my orchards and I still must set traps every fall, during September and October when they are most active. Their habits are such that they do most of their tunnelling in the early fall months, before frost, during which time they expose and isolate the roots on which they intend to feed during the winter months when the ground is so hard that they cannot burrow further. This period is when they are most easily trapped.

It was with the idea of establis.h.i.+ng a balance of nature against these animals that I conceived the idea of importing bull snakes. Almost everyone has heard of the bull snake, but its name is a poor one, for it has the wrong connotation. These snakes are actually a fine friend to the farmer since each snake accounts for the death of many rodents each year. Their presence certainly was of definite value in decreasing the number at my farm. Bull snakes have the long body typical of constrictors, sometimes reaching a length of nearly six feet at maturity, and being at the most an inch and one-half in diameter. This country had a natural abundance of such snakes at one time but ignorance and superst.i.tion have lessened their number so that it is now a rare thing to find one. During the early days of automobiles, these huge bull snakes, or gopher snakes, as I prefer to call them, would lie across the sunny, dusty roads, and drivers of cars delighted in running them down.

Since they are very docile, they are the least afraid of man of any members of the local snake family. They are slow in movement until they sense the immediate presence of their natural food, which is live mice, rats, gophers, squirrels, young rabbits, and sometimes, though rarely, birds. Then it is they become alert, and the h.o.r.n.y appendage on their tails vibrates with a high-pitched, buzzing sound, simulating, although not similar to, the sound of a poisonous rattlesnake.

When I first brought some of these snakes to my farm, I loosed them and they wandered off to a neighbor's premises where they were promptly found and killed. Later importations I confined to my bas.e.m.e.nt, where I built an artificial pool with frogs and fish in it. However, I could never induce the bull snakes to eat any of these batrachians. They would, almost playfully, stalk the frogs, but at the moment when one was within reach, the snake would glide away. Neither would the snakes, unless force-fed, eat anything they had not caught themselves.

My children were delighted to have the snakes there and made pets of them. Only once was one of the girls bitten when she attempted force-feeding. The bite was a mere scratch but we feared that it might be slightly poisonous. However, it healed so promptly that it was quite apparent that the bull snake's bite is not toxic. I, too, have had my skin slightly punctured by their teeth, but always the wound healed with no more pain or trouble than a pin p.r.i.c.k. Such is not at all the case when a person is nipped by a squirrel or gopher. I have purposely allowed a pocket gopher to bite me, to determine what the effects are.

The pain was severe and healing was slow. Once, bitten by a gray squirrel when I reached into a hollow tree to get it, I received such a wound that fever started in my whole hand. Its teeth punctured a finger-nail and were stopped only by meeting the bone. Such bites I consider rather poisonous.

Rabbits also committed much damage at my nursery by gnawing the bark of my trees, especially during times of deep snow. They did not bother the walnuts particularly, but were very fond of hickories and pecan trees.

On the smallest ones, they cut branches off and carried them away to their nests. On larger trees, they gnawed the bark off of most of the lower branches. This was dangerous but seldom fatal, whereas the gnawing of mice, near the base of the trunks, was such that in some cases when complete girdling occurred, it was necessary to use bridge-grafting to save the trees. This consists of connecting the bark immediately above the roots with the bark above the girdled portion, so that the tree can receive and send the food substances it elaborates to its upper and lower parts.

Rabbits and mice, therefore, had to be dealt with. Of course, one could go hunting for rabbits and later eat them. This was one task I had my employees do. I, myself, was unwilling to take an active part in it, although still intent on saving my trees in spite of my pity for the little animals. Placing hundreds of cans in the orchard, with a pinch of poisoned wheat and oat mixture in each, helped to eradicate the mice.

The bait was placed inside the cans to prevent birds from being poisoned, and the cans were tipped at an angle so that water would not enter them.

To be absolutely sure of preventing mice damage, one should provide each tree with a screen guard. I have made about 10,000 screen protectors for my trees for this purpose. I have also trapped rabbits which we were not able to shoot and I conceived the idea of painting the traps with white enamel. When these were set on the snow around those trees which the rabbits attacked, they worked very successfully. The traps were a size larger than the common gopher trap, but were not expensive. There are other ways of catching rabbits or curtailing their activities, but on my list, shooting comes first, with trapping as a second effective measure.

Squirrels, although they do no damage to the trees themselves, except on rare occasions, are a definite nuisance when they come in large numbers and cut down nuts before they are ripe. They do this to hickory nuts, and apparently are very fond of the half-ripened nuts. I have seen squirrels chew hickory buds and young sprouts of hickory grafts and I had to trap several before I stopped them from doing this to certain ornamental trees in our garden. In fact, when one has a large nut orchard, squirrels will be attracted in number that preclude the possibility of harvesting a crop unless measures are taken to banish them. They are very active early in the morning and my experiences indicate that two or three people should hunt them together, as they are very clever at dodging a single hunter. I also have built galvanized metal guards around isolated trees which prevent squirrels from climbing them.

In speaking of mice, we have two important species commonly known as the meadow mouse and the other species known as the white-footed mouse. The meadow mouse is the one that does so much damage to the orchard trees and young nursery stock if unprotected, and the white-footed mouse may be responsible for some of this when present in great numbers, but of the white-footed mouse this much good can be said:

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drwg. by Wm. Kuehn. _Squirrel guards._]

Much of its diet, especially of the mother mouse during the time that she is nursing her young ones, is made up of insects. A personal experience accentuates this. Since these are such pretty little creatures, having such cunning ways, it was my ambition to catch a complete family of mother and young ones which sometimes numbered as high as ten. My ambition was finally gratified and I was able to get a mother of eight and her tiny mouslings, which have a habit of fastening themselves securely to her b.r.e.a.s.t.s while she runs about, and drags them all along in a most ludicrous fas.h.i.+on. At times, under these circ.u.mstances, the combined weight of the brood exceeds that of the mother mouse but they are exceptionally strong creatures for their size, a mature mouse being able to jump out of a 3-foot barrel with one leap.

In observing this brood of mice, I was particularly anxious to see what kind of a diet they throve on and tried the mother's appet.i.te with tidbits from the table. While she ate most everything, it soon became apparent that something was wrong because the young ones became weaker, finally to the extent that they were unable to nurse, and one morning I found several on their backs with their feet feebly waving in the air indicating that they were dying of starvation. At about that time I was drying some hazelnuts on a flat back porch floor and in sweeping them up found a lot of alive and dried up larvae which had escaped from the sh.e.l.ls. Just for fun, I swept this material up and threw it into the mouse cage. The reaction of this treatment was gratifying, for the mother mouse pounced upon this insect life greedily devouring everything. Within three days, the young mice were all in good health and running around showing that the milk produced from the diet that I had been giving the mother was inadequate for the baby mice. It is therefore to their credit to state that these mice and probably at times the meadow mice do consume large quant.i.ties of larvae and grubs in the surface soil, as well as mature active insects, such as crickets and gra.s.shoppers.

HOW TO PREPARE RODENT PROTECTORS FOR TREES

1. Cut 6" strips from 24" wide roll of galvanized screen with a 12 x 12 mesh.

2. Cut strips in half to make two protectors from each strip.

3. Make bundles of 25 each by running wire through protectors.

4. Dip these bundles in a solution containing 5 pounds of red lead per gallon of linseed oil. Use from 3 to 5 gallons of this solution.

5. Remove bundles and hang them on a pole with a drip pan beneath to catch the solution, which can be used again. Allow bundles to drip for 8 hours, then separate each protector and place on gra.s.s for a few days to dry.

6. Roll each protector around a 3/4" pipe or broomstick and it is ready for the tree.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Drwg. by Wm. Kuehn. _Preparation of screen guards._]

In dealing with wild creatures, one must forebear condemning a whole species of animals merely because at times they become troublesome, for the main purpose of their existence, like owls, hawks and crows, they may be more beneficial than otherwise.

A good word should be said here for skunks and moles. A great deal of the skunk diet is insect life. The same is true of the mole whose diet probably consists of 75% insects, mostly in their larval state. This is an important feature of mole and skunk as they dig these insects out before they mature into winged female adults which may lay hundreds of eggs. If these larvae should be allowed to develop into a mature winged insect that would lay eggs, this particular insect would multiply itself hundreds of times over and it would take many more birds than at present exist to take over the big job of keeping the balance between necessary insect life and a surplus which would be destructive to all plant life.

We can never hope to eradicate all insect life which we deplore as being deleterious to the interests of mankind, and it is mighty well that we cannot do this for the insects are as important to us as all other life, for without them we would be unable to produce the vast quant.i.ties of foods that are now dependent upon such insect life. It is true that they take their toll of the food that they are instrumental in sometimes producing but when one attempts to unravel the mystery of balance of nature one is confronted by the big question of how far to go in the eradication of both animals and insect pests. Before man's interference the wild crops were plentiful and balances were kept in harmony by vast mult.i.tudes of frogs and toads, birds and rodents, all of which have been slaughtered and reduced by such amounts as to endanger man's food supply, forcing him to resort to poison sprays and other measures in order to hold destruction in check. All of this expense and trouble he could have avoided if he had been sensible enough to observe the natural checks and foster the natural procedure of which nature is the best guide.

Chapter 12

STORING AND PLANTING SEEDS

Most nut tree seed requires ideal storage conditions to preserve its germinating power or viability. Under natural circ.u.mstances, such nuts as black walnuts, English walnuts, b.u.t.ternuts, hickory nuts, pecans, hazelnuts, filberts and almost all other nuts, will be planted by squirrels, mice and other rodents. Although most of these will be eaten by the animals who buried them, a large percentage of the ones which are not eaten will sprout. The sprouts which achieve maturity and bearing age, however, will be only a very small percentage--some say only a fraction of 1%--of the number that sprouted. This is an expensive and wasteful method, horticulturally speaking, but it does indicate that it is best to plant nuts as soon as possible after they have properly ripened and been dried.

After walnuts, hickory nuts, b.u.t.ternuts and hazels have been gathered, they should be dried until the hulls have lost most of their moisture.

The husks should be removed from filberts before they are dried. While this preparation is not essential, nuts are less likely to mold if they are dried somewhat before they are planted. However, I have planted freshly-gathered black walnuts and b.u.t.ternuts and most of them sprouted.

If nuts are to be stored in large quant.i.ties, the drying-out process is absolutely essential and should be carried to the point of completely drying the hulls. The system I followed in doing this is to gather the nuts after they have fallen and spread them out in the sunlight on roofs or floors where air can circulate around them. After the hulls are dry, such nuts as black walnuts, English walnuts and b.u.t.ternuts may be put in barrels or burlap bags and stored in an unheated bas.e.m.e.nt without seriously deteriorating. English walnuts are most safely stored when they are hulled before being packed in burlap bags. These bags should be suspended above the floor of the cellar by a rope or wire. These are additional precautions which allow better circulation of air, further prevention of mold, and safety from mice and squirrels.

Chestnuts, beechnuts and acorns require more care when they are to be stored, for their viability is very sensitive to dryness. I have found that these soft-sh.e.l.led species of nuts should be treated in a different manner than the walnut and hickory types of seeds if we are to get the most out of their germination. Since chestnuts are very p.r.o.ne to molding or rotting, the best way to maintain their viability and freshness over winter is to stratify them in a can or box between layers of a peat moss. This peat moss must be decidedly on the acid side and must be dampened, but must not be so wet that you can wring any water out of it.

The best way to prepare this dry peat moss is to soak it in water and wring as much water out of it as possible by squeezing with your hands.

Then mix it with half as much of the undampened peat. This will give you approximately the right moisture coefficient. If stored in cans, the bottom of the can must be punctured with a few holes about 1/4 of an inch in diameter, well distributed on the bottom to act as a drain and to admit some slight circulation of air. The same thing should be done with the cover.

First, put down an even layer about 1-1/2 inches of this dampened moss, then put in a layer of chestnuts or other nuts to be stratified, placed evenly or well distributed but not touching each other. After the first layer, carefully sift in more dampened moss about 1 inch thick and repeat the process until either the can is full or all the seeds have been stored. The last layer should be a 2-inch layer of peat moss before the cover is placed on. Now the important thing about all this is to place this can in a storage room of low temperature and yet it should not freeze solid. But in a temperature of from 32 to 40 degrees is ideal and preferably it should be on the ground floor so as to maintain the moisture that is already stored in the seed and the moss. A mechanical refrigerator which would constantly dehydrate might eventually dry them out too much for good germination; otherwise such a refrigerator would be ideal for the storage of small amount of seeds of this kind.