Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting Part 17

MR. SILVIS: We can't spend too much time thinking about the atomic bomb.

We can't think too much about getting an organization to start this, it just takes somebody to go ahead and do it. We don't need experiment stations to develop the nut, either. The nut was here a long time before the experiment station was ever developed.

I wrote in a letter here two or three or maybe four years ago--I think it was after the Norris meeting, to every vice-president in NNGA that commercial possibilities of a nut must first be apparent before any experiment station is interested, because then money is involved, capital has been invested. Before capital can be invested must come coordination. Coordination is labor. That's grafting or flowering, or whatever you want to call it--back-breaking exercise.

I still think we have the organization here. We don't need to argue about any more organization. We have organization right here in our own State Vice-presidents. I tried to bring that out, the suggestion as to the fact that I thought maybe the State Vice-president would serve on a perpetual committee, if he lived into perpetuity, to get these zones within his state. If Illinois is 400 miles long and he has 16 zones of climate, let him get 16 plantings of the same kind of a nut in those 16 zones. The same way with Texas, the same way with Montana or Ohio.

MR. SHERMAN: I think both Mr. Stoke and Mr. Davidson thought that it might be a good idea to give somebody a job instead of an honorary position by naming a State vice-president for that sort of a job. Now, we have got to start somewhere, and that would be a good place to start: give somebody something to do, like some of these other dead people that will feed these nuts that Corsan was telling us about this afternoon.

But the commercial possibilities are always apparent. You can subsidize them, you know. If you can get enough money behind it, you can subsidize it. I think our problem still is the same as it was before: We are still trying to find out what the other guy has that's better than our own.

And if we have got five nuts that are any good, I'd like to know about them myself.

DR. CRANK: That's right.

MR. SILVIS: I will make this statement in favor of the Homeland black walnut--if we are on black walnuts. I came in a little late on account of the mud here. The Homeland is growing in Ma.s.sillon, and Mr. Stoke sent me the scions. All it did was produce staminate bloom. I gave some of the wood to John Gerstenmaier in Ma.s.sillon. It is doing very well.

I also favor the Thomas black walnut, and I think the hickories and everything else have commercial possibilities. Just let somebody go ahead and correlate these factors. Life is very short. I have copies of these letters, four letters out of 50 or 60 that I prepared.

DR. CRANE: Mr. Jay Smith. We are going to have to limit this to not over three minutes' time.

MR. JAY SMITH: My experience is somewhat limited. I have a few seedling trees that are good, and I have a few named varieties that seem to be good. I just want to point out one reason why we should have a number of varieties. One of my choice varieties in my back yard has five nuts on it this year, and it has produced a good crop other years. And the answer seems to be that the pollen came out during a period of very rainy weather and the tree did not fertilize. Now, other trees apparently blossomed before or after, mostly after, but this one was a rather early blooming tree, and I have more nuts on other types of trees.

One of my good seedling trees has very few nuts on this year. Possibly that might be for a similar reason. So regardless of how good these varieties may be, we must have several varieties. Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

I have some good filberts that came from Geneva, and they have had trouble with wood damage due to the beetles laying eggs in the wood, and the beetles may possibly have come from nearby willows. And I have had some of the willow growing, too, because I thought it looked nice. Now I have cut down all of the willow, and there is some birch in the neighborhood, and I understand the birch harbors this same thing, some variety of Agrilus beetle,[7] and we have a lot of angles to work on in order to get rid of our drawbacks. And we have the matters of season and soil and elevation. It's quite a big problem.

[7] Agrilus anxius Gory, the bronze birch borer.

DR. CRANE: It ~is~ a big problem, but we will never settle it the way we are going. We have got to do better.

MR. STOKE: I don't know whether I have anything that is really pertinent to say. The thought I had in mind should have come sooner. That is: Why are we growing nuts? There are two angles from which we can approach that, two natural angles. Here is the angle of the amateur that wants to grow nuts to eat. After all, that's what I suppose they are for. There is the commercial grower who wants to grow them to make a profit, and I think we should approach our subject, evaluation of nuts, from either one of those two angles, or work along two different channels. I think that's very necessary.

You take the Elberta peach. If you want a peach in your back yard, you are not going to plant Elberta peaches to eat. If you want to make a commercial success, you are going to plant the Elberta, if you know anything about it. Are we commercial nut growers, or do we grow them for home consumption? Go downstairs and look at the nuts we judged last year and the eye appeal of some that didn't rate at all would sell those nuts ahead of the prize winner. But if you want to grow them to eat, those three prize winners are the best nuts down there.

And if we thrash over this field, I think we have got a definite idea of what we are after, and I think we should have had that to start with.

DR. CRANE: That's right, and there is one other point of view, too.

There is a third reason for growing nut trees. That is simply for the ornamental value. That hasn't been dealt with.

MR. WELLMAN: I'd just like to ask a question. There has been some reference to apples here. I don't know very much about it, but I understand that the American Pomological Society got out a list of apples nearly a century ago, which they have kept changing and adding to and subtracting from over all of that time. Is there any a.n.a.logy there that would help us in anything we can do? They made mistakes and put apples on there that they are sorry they put on and they have had to take off. People don't use those varieties in one part or another part of the country for some reason. Is there any reason why we shouldn't follow some suggestion such as that, stick our necks out and go ahead?

DR. CRANE: That is right, no reason in the world why you can't.

MR. SHERMAN: I'd like to do some commenting. You are doing here tonight what you have done at the last meeting. You have talked varieties. I thought the purpose of that was to get a committee appointed some way, some organization that will say, "Here are certain varieties that should be tested. Make arrangements to propagate those varieties and have them tested."

I made a demonstration right downstairs here; some of you witnessed it.

You have got some black walnuts that you are cracking. I went out to the car and got some that would crack in four nice quarters that laid out. I tried it again. Sure, they cracked and cracked good. Where can I get some trees? There are a lot of you right here who would take them just that quick (snapping fingers), take them home and test them.

This meeting was to get an organization or discuss a means of getting an organization that will get those trees propagated and spread out for testing. Now, I think it's just as simple as A, B, C. It's a prolonged job. You have got to have an organization that's going to perpetuate itself for the next century, because if you start that organization right it will be here a hundred years from now, and you will be just as busy a hundred years from now as you are right now.

What that committee has got to be, whether it is a statewide or a nationwide, Northern Nut Growers or Pennsylvania Nut Growers or Ohio Nut Growers, is a committee of five--I will say five, you can make it 10 or 15--that will say, "Now, for Ohio here are ten varieties that we think should be tested. Get 50 trees of each of those ten propagated and spread out over Ohio and find out where they will grow." That will apply for some of Western Pennsylvania, too. It isn't just state lines, understand, but the main thing is to get that variety tested before your nurseryman is spreading it all over everywhere.

And how can you get it tested? You have got to have some trees propagated, and you have got to have some nurseryman who knows about the propagation. And I will say a lot of you nurserymen, and there are a lot of you here, take it or leave it, don't know how to propagate a decent black walnut tree. I have had them sent to me with a 6-inch sprout growing in the top of a club. I have had others two years old with a nice whip five feet high, one-year-old growth. You have got to have good trees. You have got to have a nurseryman who knows how to propagate those ten and send them out.

Now, the next meeting was to find out what sort of an organization you have got to have to get that done, not talk about a Stabler, whether this is good or that is good. That's what you have been doing for 40 years.

MR. SLATE: It takes more than a committee, it takes land, labor, tools, supervisory people.

MR. SHERMAN: I can point to 25 members that will take ten varieties that they will test--and pay for them.

MR. O'ROURKE: I would like to say, are we going to wait until we test all of those varieties? We have no information to answer all those letters that are coming in. We want something, not tomorrow, we want something today, that we can give them, information which, at least to the best of our knowledge of today is accurate. And the only way we can get that accurate information is to get a committee together in each region.

MR. SHERMAN: That won't take care of the future. That will answer our present questions to the best of our knowledge, but we want an organization that will take care of the future.

DR. CRANE: There is one other thing that I should mention. We in the Department of Agriculture have released a number of new varieties. We have got others coming on, not only your chestnuts, but filberts and others, pecans, and so on. But we haven't got any organization in any way, shape or form. We can put these out with the growers who test them, but gee whiz, we have put them out and put them out; and look what kind of information we get. We haven't got facilities or the money or anything else to follow up. We have got to have some organization some way, somehow, that could take this material and test it, at least give some idea as to how it performed.

Now, then, the question is what kind of an organization? If the Northern Nut Growers is not the one that should do it, what kind of an organization can be effective to do it?

MR. CORSAN: Now I'd just like to say one more thing tonight. That chestnut blight, I honestly believe, was a G.o.dsend to this country. I can remember way back when I'd go into a store and buy a lot of these Paragon chestnuts in New York City in the finest grocery store, and they were crammed full of weevils. Now, the chestnut blight came, and it has about annihilated the weevil, because there was no chestnut to weevil in. And I would like to have some report about the weevil.

MR. WILSON: They are in Georgia.

MR. McDANIEL: They are in Virginia and Indiana.

DR. MacDANIELS: Mr. Chairman, I suppose I should have the chair. This is a committee of the whole.

DR. CRANE: That's right.

DR. MacDANIELS: I have a right to speak,

DR. CRANE: That's right.

DR. MacDANIELS: I say we have always come down to the point, here we are, where do we go from here and what do we do next? There, in a word, "Here we are." Lots of discussion, much of it irrelevant. I will just propose, along the lines I spoke before, that what comes out of this is that We recommend to the incoming president to organize a survey and testing campaign along the lines that seem to meet with some agreement; namely, getting the state vice-presidents busy in finding out the regional evaluation of different varieties.

Supposing we try black walnuts; just one species for this year, and that he organize his state according to zones and come up with that information with regard to that state.

And the other thing would be that these findings be sent to the committee. We have a committee on surveys and one on judging and standards, and let that be compiled by them jointly or set up in some way that would seem to be effective and come up next year with this overall evaluation along those lines.

I'd make that motion.

DR. COLBY: Second the motion.

DR. MacDANIELS: Any discussions?

DR. ANTHONY: In Pennsylvania two of us have worked full time for a year, and I am not sure we'd be able to evaluate the black walnut yet.

DR. CRANE: We are not evaluating the black walnut, though.

DR. ANTHONY: You are asking one man to do that, your vice-president.