Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting Part 14

MR. CORSAN: But don't plant it outside the peach belt.

DR. CRANE: Well, the peach belt is an awful lot of territory. I know I am going to be wrong, but I know I am going to be safer with Thomas variety than I would be with some of the others.

Now, I think that it's time, and I think that the biggest thing that the Northern Nut Growers' a.s.sociation can do is to give very serious thought and take action at this meeting some way looking towards the a.s.sociation's giving consideration to methods and means whereby we can properly evaluate varieties that we have that are growing so that we can recommend and tell others the varieties that they should grow.

You know, here is the situation exactly. In the territory of the Northern Nut Growers we don't have a commercial industry at the present time. I doubt if there is a single family of the Northern Nut Growers who are here that depend on the sale of nuts for their living. Well, when your living depends on something, you take an awful lot of interest in it. And that has been true in the case of apples, for example. I don't know how many there are, but twenty years ago or more there have been fifteen or sixteen thousand apple varieties that have been described and have been planted and propagated, and you can name all of the commercial apple varieties grown in the United States almost on the fingers of your hands. That is, the important ones. Oh, the list has grown, would probably take in 200, but that 190 hardly make a drop in the bucket as compared to the ten big ones.

Well, the same thing is true with peaches. The Elberta peach just is completely outstanding. It's a big commercial peach. Now, in all of the a.s.sociation here, almost every paper that is presented always has some commercial aspect mentioned in the paper, but we could never have any commercial industry as long as we are fooling with a lot of these varieties with n.o.body giving them the serious consideration that they deserve, in an effort to properly evaluate them.

This evaluation of a variety is our problem. I have given an awful lot of thought to it over the years and how to get around it, how to come up with the proper answers within the near future so that we can be of help to others and stop a lot of our amateurs, those who are attracted to the industry, from making mistakes and getting discouraged. That is the problem. And that is the thing that I want all of you to be thinking about tonight and help us with the suggestions.

Now, we could just start almost, I expect, in dogfights, if we were to conduct this round table to get to discussing the different qualities or desirability or other aspects among varieties, and each fellow would be right, because I know there wouldn't be agreement. It would make an interesting round table, but I don't know how constructive it would be.

So I have tried in these preliminary remarks to get you to thinking about this problem, of evaluation.

Now, there is one other way that we could go about it. For years we have had in the Northern Nut Growers a.s.sociation a group of officers that are known under the t.i.tle of State Vice-Presidents, and I think if you judge by their performance in the past, the main reason that we have had these State Vice-presidents is that we were attempting to confer some honor on somebody, the honor being in having them so designated and their names published as State Vice-presidents in the proceedings. In many cases their performance hasn't warranted that honor, because, after all, a vice-president is supposed to be a working vice-president, not an ornament. The ornament is supposed to be the president, if we have any such thing. At least, that's what I have heard. I have never been president. And I have thought that if in the consideration of our State Vice-presidents we select the ones who are particularly active and very much interested in this variety problem and in the Northern Nut Growers'

a.s.sociation, that we might take up this variety problem and get us information by two ways.

One would be through surveys made in their states by contact with the growers, either personal contacts or by letters. Then those reports could be a.s.sembled, and we could have our variety committee over all, so the a.s.sociation could attempt to evaluate. That would be one start.

Another thing would be that our State Vice-president in collaboration with the President, would appoint a state committee. Now, we have a lot of growers in some states that are vitally interested. In Pennsylvania, for example, and in Ohio and New York we have a lot of growers who are members of this or state a.s.sociations that are vitally interested in this thing. You have a State Vice-president appointing a committee in collaboration with the president of the National to evaluate the variety situation as it exists in their state.

Now, we would expect them to do some honest work on this thing and come up with a report in which the different members could agree. Then we would be nearer getting unanimity of opinions. We have got to get this some way so that we can agree upon what we do with the answers to individuals better than we have been doing in the past.

There may be some error to this. Well, you see, I know that some of you must be familiar with the New Jersey Peach Testing a.s.sociation. I am not sure just what the name of it is, but it's something like that.

A MEMBER: New Jersey Peach Council.

DR. CRANE: It has been a great power and a great help in regard to the selection and evaluation of peach varieties in the State of New Jersey.

In New Jersey the experiment station has had a peach breeding program going for a number of years. They have done outstanding work, and they have brought out some very good varieties. Well, the station has selected the good ones and discarded the poor ones, or what they thought were the poor ones. They call in members of this Peach Growers' Council, and they have the peaches evaluated. They are pa.s.sing them on to the fruit growers. "Do you think, in your opinion, that this would be a good peach for us to grow? Is it better? Does it have better flavor than other peach varieties?" They will, out of that group, select some of these new ones, maybe. Then the New Jersey Experiment station will see to it that the trees of these varieties are propagated, and they are given to the members of that a.s.sociation in order that they can plant them under their conditions and grow them to fruiting and see how they do.

Well, then, this committee still continues to evaluate them, and if the members of the a.s.sociation say, "Well, that's a variety we should grow,"

then they will grow it. If they feel it isn't as good as some they already have, they throw it away and that's the end of it. But they don't clutter up the variety situation with a lot of poor stuff. And they make profits, because always two heads are better than one, even though one is a sheep's head, as the old saying goes. Well, when you get four or five or more in a group and they agree, you can be sure that their opinion is far better than five individual opinions or judgments.

I am very anxious to see that tonight we agree in open discussion of this whole variety evaluation problem and that we start work some way, somehow, towards working out some means whereby we can properly and more effectively and more quickly evaluate our varieties than we have up to this time. Now, that's the end of my story. The talk and the rest of it is up to you folks.

Mr. Anthony and Mr. Sherman have been working over here in Pennsylvania.

They have found a lot of new material known only to a few people. They are just wringing their hands over there to know how in this wide world this stuff can be evaluated, the good saved, and that which is not worthy of doing anything with, well, "just pa.s.s it up" and let it go.

That's the way we make profits.

Their experience is no different from all the rest. We have nut growers with whom I have had correspondence in years past who want to propagate material that this a.s.sociation should have flatly condemned years ago, because the majority of the group here knows it is worthless, but they just haven't done it. Now, it's time that we change this thing, or I will tell you frankly in a lot of ways the Nut Growers' a.s.sociation has become a social inst.i.tution, rather than one which we learn from and recommend practices to the new groups that are coming on to keep them from making mistakes.

Now, I have talked from the bottom of my heart tonight, and I want some of the rest of you here to express your opinions and give suggestions as to how we might do that.

MR. WEBER: Dr. Crane, I think I will start the ball rolling, and I think Ohio has taken the lead in the very thing you have been talking about.

It's the Northern Ohio group. They have been very active in finding out the better nut varieties that were suitable to Ohio conditions, both the black walnuts and the hickories. They have conducted contests, both for black walnut and hickories. They practice what they preach. They have traded their information. They are up in the northern part, and I am down in the southern part, too far to be included with them, so I am not blowing my own horn; I am blowing it for the other fellows. And I think they are a worthwhile group, and if you look to the members.h.i.+p in this a.s.sociation in Ohio, I think it has the largest members.h.i.+p. And you get that Northern Ohio group, they test out varieties, and a man will fight for a particular one in his group against the variety from another. And so they are not afraid to stand up and say what they think.

But having done that, we need the aid of our different state agriculture groups. You must have a place where they can go and put those trees on a testing ground so the people can go there and see them. You can go there to this Ohio experiment station and you will see this variety growing, or you go over to the other branch and see this variety growing, and then when they find the state has taken it up, it gives them confidence more than a fellow blowing his horn for one variety against another variety.

You have to get the members in their own states to form their own local organizations and carry out what you have been talking about here and find out in their particular states which are the best varieties. And then you get a starting point, and each individual state's agricultural experiment station should take it up, follow it up, if they have the funds. Where if one individual gives his mite and then his health fails or life fails, why, he has contributed his mite, and it will be perpetuated. But if it's on my place or someone else's place, the next fellow doesn't appreciate it, and if they need the wood handy, down comes that tree. It has no memories from then on, and it's not perpetuated.

So I think some of the Northern Ohio members--I think Mr. Smith is here, are there any other members? Silvis--deserve a lot of credit.

MR. McDANIEL: I would like particularly to hear if the Northern Ohio group has got together on a discard list. Have they agreed on any one variety they don't want to plant?

MR. STERLING SMITH: I am glad you brought out the black walnut. I am more familiar with it than with other species, and I have been personally thinking along your line for several years. We have in black walnuts probably over 200. I started to count them up one time. I got 196, and I know there were more than that, I don't know how many. And among those nearly 200 varieties of black walnuts I am confident there must be 150 at least that aren't worth being grown--that is, in Northern Ohio. They may be good in some other places, or they may be worthwhile for experimental purposes. But to grow them for commercial means or for home use, they are not good varieties. And I have suggested to different ones eliminating them, or trying to work out, say, maybe 25 or 50 and then from those 50 try to pick out ten. There has not much been done on it. There is a lot of difficulty in a situation like that.

DR. CRANE: That's right.

MR. STERLING SMITH: Here is one thing: What one person has varieties which correspond with what his neighbor or somebody ten miles down the road will have? We will take Grundy, for example, or Rohwer, some of those. Two or three of them might have that, but the ten or fifteen other members in the near vicinity won't have that variety. That's one of the difficulties.

And I have thought personally that there should be some sort of committee set up along the line you suggested, not necessarily on state lines, but more on zone or regional lines.

DR. CRANE: Yes, sir, that's what I mean.

MR. STERLING SMITH: Because those suitable in Northern Ohio wouldn't necessarily be suitable in Southern Ohio, and so with any of the states along that tier of states. And I think there should be some type of committee set up to judge these different varieties as far as we can, and also to enlarge their testing plan.

Mr. Shessler, I believe, has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 under test, maybe three or four of the same tree. For myself, I don't know exactly what I do have, somewhere between 40 and 50 varieties, but there are only about 10 or 12 of them bearing. And I have of late years started working on that line, having sort of a test orchard, having one or two trees of the several varieties so I can find out what to plant.

Not too many years ago I was in the position of the amateur who wanted to know what to plant. Should I plant Stabler, Ohio, Thomas? It was just like you spoke about concerning the inquiries that you have. I have earnestly read all the reports and have earnestly looked where I could get them in time for the current year. I read so I would know what the new varieties are and what different people's opinions on them were. And I think there should be a central committee, probably like you suggested.

And another suggestion I would like to make would be that before we permit, as far as possible, any further new varieties of black walnut to be mentioned or published, that they be pa.s.sed upon by several of the members, oh, maybe ten of the members, at least, to learn what their opinion is before they are mentioned. Lots of times one or two persons have a good opinion of the nut, and immediately something is published about it, and as you say, immediately a half dozen fellows write for it, as in your Persian walnut contest. And it would be better if that nut weren't allowed to be named until it has been pa.s.sed upon by a qualified group of, we will say, experts. And that same condition should be carried out with the Persian walnut and the hickories and northern pecans and other groups of nuts we are interested in.

MR. CORSAN: I'd like to suggest that we get started on this matter of varieties, because we can say an awful lot and then say nothing. I have tested a great many varieties of black walnuts, and as soon as I hear people talk about the Stabler walnut, I know they know nothing about nuts at all, because the Stabler has a crop on it only about once in twenty years, and then it's a small crop. It's a very good nut to eat and crack, but it's not for crops. As this gentleman says, the Thomas.

We all know the Thomas. There is one point about the Thomas, you have got to keep it within just the northern limits of the peach belt where the peach will grow. There are years that come around when the Thomas will not mature. The frost will come on. It has a very thick outer sh.e.l.l, the hull, and the hull comes off the nut itself quite clean. And then we hear people talking about the Ohio. Now, what about it? Well, it's a monster nut when you look at it on the tree, but knock the thick hull off of it, the strong, st.u.r.dy hull, and there's only a little nut in it. Yet you have something that cracks well enough. The nuts I would condemn right away are the Ohio and Stabler. No doubt about it.

Now the Cresco, very, very rich! That tree will actually kill itself, just overbearing. You know a tree can kill itself. Some people kill themselves having 24 or 30 children, but that's about what that tree will do.

Then we have the nut that years ago I saw, the Snyder, and I said to Mr.

Snyder, "Look, it's a sure nut." He said, "Never saw it." He looked at it, examined it, and it's a marvelous nut. I think I have the backing of our friend, Mr. Gilbert Smith. I think he'd back me in saying that that is one of the best nuts in the world, even with the Thomas.

But we don't quite want to reduce--comb down the list of varieties like the apple grower has. When you go to Boston and ask a peddler or hawker about "apples," he won't know what you are talking about. Apples?--they wonder what the word is. It is "McIntosh." They will go around the street shouting, "McIntosh, McIntosh." You won't hear the word "apple"

in Boston, it's "McIntosh."

Now, let's get down to nuts, and let us know our nuts.

MR. CALDWELL: (New York State College of Forestry.) I suppose this is my first time at a meeting of this sort, and probably I should observe with a critical mind. But when you speak about a committee to pa.s.s upon varieties, immediately I start wondering exactly what you mean by a variety, and then I start wondering what your approach is in picking that so-called variety.

First of all, a "variety" that you use is not really a variety. It is just a vegetation of one particular tree that you happened upon. You decided by chance it was a tree you wanted to use and then pa.s.sed it around to your friends and decided you want it.

DR. CRANE: I want to correct you, for one reason: It is truly a horticultural variety or clone that has just as much standing or ident.i.ty as the botanist's or forester's "variety."

MR. CALDWELL: It is a clone, and I agree with you, but a variety seems--

DR. CRANE: You are speaking from the forester's point of view.

MR. CALDWELL: That's why I make this other statement.