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However, it is a very hard proposition how best to go about it to 

 establish a shagbark hickory orchard. I should say, buy propagated 

 trees if you can get them, if not, plant nuts where you want the future 

 tree, and then top work the resulting seedlings to the choice varieties. 

 I don't know but I think I have just experience enough to warrant me 

 in saying that by this latter plan I can beat any other plan to tlie pro- 

 duction of shagbark hickory nuts. The most discouraging feature in 

 establishing' a hickory orchard is the long period of time required to 

 bring it up to profitable bearing. I have some more or less accurate 

 data on this particular point. At home we have a shagbark hickory 

 tree which is just about forty-eight years old, which was produced by 

 planting a nut where the tree stands and has not since been disturbed. 

 The first nuts produced on this tree were in its eighth year, since which 

 time there has been a gradual increase in tlie volume of its crop until 

 last year it produced five pecks of clean, cured nuts at the rate of 

 fifty pounds per bushel and quite a few more were taken by the kids 

 and squirrels before the cured crop was weighed up. At the low price 

 of ten cents per })ound, this tree last year produced more money than 

 the real value of the land which it occupies. What if it does take fifty 

 years to develop such a tree? I regard it as yet only an infant just 

 beginning a useful career, and standing in good soil with favorable 

 surroundings, barring accidents, it is certainly good for several hun- 

 dred years and perhaps a thousand, even a more enduring monument 

 to its planter's memory than a slab of marble. 



Young people are the ones who should be planting these long-lived 

 trees. A young man ought to live long enough to realize much benefit 

 from such a planting. 



The shagbark hickory and black walnut are the nuts I like best 

 and I am going to give the most of my attention to. They will also be 

 more successful than any others under our Iowa conditions. There 

 are other more or less desirable nuts which we can grow, which I will 

 notice very briefly. The butternut is a thrifty, hardy, and fruitful 

 tree, of which we have four outstanding varieties in Iowa, namely, 

 Buckley, Sherwood, Utterback, and Helmick hybrid. The latter a 

 hybrid of Sieboldi and the native butternut. Of pecans, shellbark 

 hickories, and hiccans we have quite a list that succeed well in the 

 southeastern part of our state but I am beginning to fear they will be 

 of little use in my part of Iowa (I.inn County). Chestnuts do well if 



