BETTER FRUIT 



EDITOR: W. H. WALTON 



STATE ASSOCIATE EDITORS 



OKEGON — C. I. Lewis, Horticulturist. 



WASHINGTON — Dr. A. L. .Mclaiider, Entomoloeist : 

 O. M. Morris. Horticulturist, Pullman. 



COLORADO — C. P. Gillette. i)ireclor and Entoniolnclst : 

 E. B. House. Irrigatioa Eipert. Stale Agricultural College. 

 Fort Collins. 



ARIZONA— E. P. Taylor. Hortlcnltnrlst. Tucson. 



WISCONSIN— Dr. E. D. Ball. Madison. 



MONT.\N.\ — O. B. Whipple. Horticulturist. Bozeman. 



CALIFORNIA— C. W. Woodwortli. Entomoloelst. Berke- 

 ley: W. H. ^'olrk. Entomologist. Watsonville: Leon D. 

 Batchelor. Horticulturist. Rivereide. 



INDIANA— H. S. Jackson. PatholoKisl. Lafayette. 



An Illustrated Magazine Devoted to the Interests 



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YOLI'ME XT\' 



Portland, Oregon, January 1, 1920 



XUMBER 7 



The Cultivation of the Filbert in the Northwest 



THE names of Gillette, Quarnberg 

 and Dorris stantl out head and 

 shoulders among those who have 

 contributed towards the development of 

 the filbert industry in the West. Felix 

 Gillette, of Nevada City, California, in- 

 troduced and tried out many varieties 

 of filberts, as well as walnuts, from 

 France, his native country. He propa- 

 gated them and disseminated the most 

 promising of the varieties, and today 



By Knight Pearcy, Salem, Oregon 



had sufficient faith in the filbert to make 

 a real planting. While he started with 

 filberts a number of years after Quarn- 

 berg did, he is nevertheless as much of 

 a pioneer as is the Vancouver man, in 

 that he knew nothing of the results of 

 the latter when he made his planting. 

 His results have been such that he has 

 increased his acreage from year to year 

 until he is probably the largest commer- 

 cial grower in America, and he has 



this fungus. The cultivated filbert of 

 commerce, which is a European cousin 

 to our American hazels, however, has 

 never had the opportunity to build up 

 strains immune to this American fungus, 

 and shows little resistance to it. The 

 wild hazel growing in Western America 

 is of a dift'erent species than that of 

 Eastern America and is not a host to the 

 filbert blight, hence the ^cultivated fil- 

 bert is grown here without danger of 



View in Oregon lllbert orchard, showing filbert bush in foreground 



being trained to tree form. The young limbs around the trunk of 



the tree are being left to provide material for new plantings. 



Filberts in the same orchard showing the bush form. Both of 



these illustrations show that, while the trees are young, they are 



making a good growth and are in flne condition. 



most of the plantings of the Northwest 

 trace their origin to these early impor- 

 tations of this nut-loving Frenchman. 



A. A. Quarnberg, of Vancouver, Wash- 

 ington, is a tree lover with an experi- 

 mental turn of mind, with an especial 

 leaning towards nuts. He early got in 

 touch with Gillette and carried on an 

 extensive correspondence with him, in 

 addition to buying many varieties of nut 

 trees, which he set out in his experi- 

 mental grounds at Vancouver. In 1894 

 Quarnberg planted the first DuChilly 

 filberts in the Northwest, and since that 

 time has tried out perhaps thirty var- 

 ieties of this nut. While he made no 

 extensive plantings he has made an 

 extensive study of varieties and his 

 writings and talks on the subject have 

 been the inspiration of many plantings. 



George Dorris, of Springfield, Oregon, 

 was the first grower in the West who 



what would be considered a small grove 

 at that, when compared with other nut 

 plantings. 



For over a hundred years attempts 

 have been made to establish filbert 

 growing in the Eastern states of this 

 country, but no planting has ever been 

 able to make a permanent stand. Many 

 growers there have been able to get 

 trees to live for a number of years and 

 have often got into print with the an- 

 nouncement that they have solved the 

 problem of growing the filbert under 

 their conditions, but sooner or later the 

 deadly filbert blight has killed them off. 

 This blight is a fungous disease that is 

 present on the wild hazel of Eastern 

 America, on which, however, it does 

 little damage, due to the fact that 

 through centuries of "natural selection" 

 a strain of hazels has developed that is 

 more or less immune to the ravages of 



extinction from that blight. Growers in 

 the West, however, should take care 

 that this fungus is not introduced here, 

 as it may be by introducing filbert 

 bushes grown in Eastern nurseries. 

 There should be an embargo against 

 shipping Eastern hazel and filbert 

 bushes into the Northwest. 



The United States imported annually 

 between 14,000,000 and 15,000,000 pounds 

 of filberts in the pre-war period from 

 1900 to 1914. Turkey, Spain and Italy 

 are the principal producing countries, 

 although both France and Great Britain 

 grow the nut. 



Compared with other tree crops in 

 the Northwest, the filbert acreage is 

 very insignificant, but a study of yields 

 and costs of production show this nut 

 to be a very promising one for this 

 favored region. While there are no 

 ollicial statistics for Oregon, the writei', 



