NUT GROWING. A NEW AMERICAN INDUSTRY 



101 



their bread of chestnut flour. 

 In Corsica they feed chestnuts 

 to the horses. In Portugal 

 the pigs are entirely fattened 

 on acorns. Farms are \alued 

 according to the number of 

 acorn oaks, chestnuts or wal- 

 nuts. The chief income of 

 nianv farmers is from walnuts 

 (ir chestnuts, filberts or al- 

 monds, millions of dollars 

 worth of which are exported 

 to us, when we ought to be 

 growing them ourselves. 



IMPORTS OF XUTS 



Our annual imports are 

 $15,000,000 in nuts and nut 

 products, in normal times, 

 with an average yearly increase 

 of about a million dollars. 



NUT GROWING IN AMERIC.\ 



And yet this country is just 

 as good as anybody's country 

 for growing nuts. \\'e have 

 such a diversity of climate 

 that we can grow most of the 

 world's varieties here in .A.mer- 

 ica, though it will take us many 

 years to develop over the 

 whole country the permanent 



system of agriculture, furnished by nuts and other tree Many people do not know that the only way we can 



crops, which has been built up through centuries in many grow any particular kind of fruit that we want is to graft 

 older countries. buds from the original tree on other trees of similar kind 



In some parts of this country, however, a splendid be- in the orchard or nursery. All fruit trees that grow from 

 ginning has already been made. The walnuts and al- seeds are new kinds. You can't grow a true Baldwin 

 nionds of California bring even higher prices than the or Greening apple from seed. You must take the buds 

 imported but do not nearly fill our needs. The new pecan from a Baldwin or Greening tree and bud or graft them 

 grown in our southern states is a wonderful thing. Most on another apple tree in orchard or nursery in order to 

 people's idea of a "pea can" is a little red nut that lurks get trees that will bear Baldwin or Greening apples. It 

 in the bottom of the Christmas bowl when all the good is the same way with nut trees. You've got to bud or 

 nuts have been picked out ; a nuisance of a nut that graft them to get the same nut that grows on the parent 

 cracks all to pieces and has to be eaten with a hairpin. 

 These are the common wild Te.xas pecans worth four or 

 five cents a pound that the dealer mixes in to increase 

 th.e profits of the mixture that he sells for twenty-five 

 cents a pounrl. 



But there is no better nut in the world than the kind of 

 pecan to which thousands of acres are now being planted 

 in the South and which most people in the North have type that Nature has found most useful for her seed pur- 

 never even seen. poses. A genius tree, like a genius man, is a rare acci- 



dent, and the children of geniuses are rarely geniuses. 

 ORIGIN OF NUT VARIETIES ^A^-^ ^.^,yj g^aft a human genius. If we could we might 



And how were these splendid nuts obtained? Not by now have whole cities of Shakespeares, just as we have 



some plant wizard mysteriously evolving them by scien- whole orchards of Baldwin apples. But we can graft 



tific processes, but simply bv putting grafts from the best genius trees and keep the characteristics practically un- 



nut trees of the fields and forests into young trees in the changed, perhaps for centuries. So if you know of a 



nursery. This does not change the nuts at all. It simply genius nut tree it is your privilege and duty to have it 



perpetuates them as Nature created them. Each grafted perpetuated by grafting, 



nursery tree bears the same nut that the parent tree bore. In the Old World, in California and in the pecan coun- 



A TYPICAL ENGLISH WALNUT ORCHARD 



This is the Vrooman Franquetta orchard, in Southern California. Great care and skilled attention is 

 given such large orchards as these, and there are many of them in Southern California. They produce 

 a very substantial annual profit for the owner. 



tree. 



A man planted a thousand nuts from one genius pecan 

 tree. Of the resulting trees no two bore nuts alike nor 

 like those of the parent tree and none as good. This is 

 because Nature isn't interested in growing things as man 

 wants them. What she is after is seed and plenty of it. 

 All trees grown from seed tend to revert to the common 



