310 STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Fruits at Woodbanks. 



NUT-GROWING. 



When, almost a decade ago, I began to aid in booming nut culture^ 

 it was in the firm conviction that it held out greater promises of finan- 

 cial success than did most of the other branches of horticulture. This 

 opinion, however, was not backed by much practical experience, and 

 soon I began to recognize that planters would have to go very slow in 

 order to avoid sad disappointments. la the years of experiment and 

 observation following, the disappointments have not failed to come. 

 Pecan trees grown from choice nuts grew too slow for my impatience, 

 and I gave them up in despair as unsuited to our northern climate. 

 English walnuts, grown from nuts gathered by myself in New Jersey, 

 made better growth, but seem to require a long time, and a favorable 

 location at the north, to bring them into fruiting. Even a specimen of 

 the early-bearing variety (Juglans regia prccparturiensj, the only one 

 under my observation, although of bearing age and size, and producing 

 fruit blossoms in abundance, failed to set fruit for lack of pollen. Fil- 

 berts have grown into good-sized bushes, but have not yet given us a 

 single nut, or even blossom. 



The Japanese Giant chestnut has shown itself as variable as *Dy 

 other seedling fruit. Its boasted prolificacy is not a uniform charac- 

 teristic of the race, and the quality of the nut is less satisfactory even 

 than that of the Spanish chestnut of our fruit-stands. Judgment over 

 all these kinds of nuts has to be held in suspense for a while. 



But the Paragon chestnut on our grounds, and wherever else I 

 have met it, has brought us a revelation. I think it justifies all the 

 claims ever made for it. I know of no kind of fruit of which I would 

 plant an orchard with greater faith in a satisfactory outcome than this 

 chestnut, and surely I would want a specimen tree or two on the home 

 grounds. The tree at Woodbanks appeared \^ith branches bent down 

 under its burden of fruit early in October, and a basket of the freshly- 

 gathered nuts. The tree was planted in the spring of 1889, and has 

 had ordinary good care. In 1892 it bore about a pint of nuts, which 

 ripened just in advance of the first severe night-frosts. This last sea- 

 son the little tree again carried all the fruit it was able to hold without 

 breaking the limbs. We gather the crop about the middle of October, 

 a few days before the first killing frosts, the nuts then being ripe and 

 most of the burrs partially open. Each of the 32 burrs contained from 

 2 to 6 perfect nuts, and altogether the 96 nuts measured nearly 3 pints^ 



