IQiS 



BETTER FRUIT 



Page II 



grown and will not reach a size neces- 

 sary to bear commercial crops at as 

 early an age as do the latter. While 

 the main point in favor of hill orchards 

 is the freedom from frosts it should be 

 borne in mind that the mere fact of 

 being located in the hills does not nec- 

 essarily guarantee thai there will be an 

 immunity to frost, as there are frosty 

 locations in the hills as well as in the 

 valleys. 



The walnut is generally planted with 

 fillers. The Italian prune is the best 

 filler for the Willamette Valley. It 

 thrives on the same types of soil, its 

 fruit can be dried in the same drier that 

 drys the walnut, it forms a compara- 

 tively small tree and comes into bear- 

 ing relatively young, yielding a profit 

 before the nuts begin to bear heavily. 

 Its fruiting season precedes that of the 

 walnut, so that there is no cempetition 

 for labor between them, and the help 

 can be given continuous work, going 

 from the prune harvest to that of the 

 nuts. The cherry, the pear and the 

 apple make poor fillers. The filbert, 

 however, shows signs of making an 

 ideal filler. It comes into bearing as 

 early as the prune and its crop is har- 

 vested and out of the way before the 

 Vt'alnut crop is ready, and it endures 

 shade better than most other trees. 

 The filler shoukl be removed as soon as 

 the walnut tree begins to crowd. 



On hill soils the nut trees are usually 

 planted on fifty-foot centers on the hex- 

 agonal plan, with fillers set between, 

 giving three fillers to every nut tree. 

 On heavier soils sixty feet is none too 

 great a distance. With solid plantings 

 (plantings without fillers) the trees arc 

 often planted a little closer together. 

 One of our leading growers spaces his 

 trees at forty-foot intervals. He real- 

 izes that at maturity these trees will be 

 too crowded to give maximum returns, 

 but since he does not expect to live 

 forever he figures that he will receive 

 a greater average annual income per 

 acre during his lifetime than he would 

 were he to plant at fifty or sixty feet. 



The age at which this tree comes into 

 bearing varies greatly. The variety, the 

 manner of cultivation and prnning and 

 heading and other factors all have a 

 bearing on the time at which a tree will 

 start fruiting. Some trees do not start 

 bearing until ten or twelve iiears old, 

 while others bear much younger, 

 (irafled trees average younger in com- 

 ing into fruiting because no tree is 

 considered worthy of propagation un- 

 less it has this character of earliness of 

 fruiting. 



We know of two oirhards, one a 

 grafted one and (he other part grafted 

 and part seedling, each of which 

 yielded sixty pounds pei- acre at seven 

 years of age. Another L!.")-acre i)iece of 

 seedlings, when seven, eight and nine 

 years old (it had trees of these three 

 ages) yielded r),OflO pounds, and a year 

 later 6,000 ])(nmds. Theie were 'seven- 

 teen trees per acre here with no fillers. 

 Another orchard at seventeen years 

 yielded 400 pounds on seven acres, at 

 twenty-one years two Ions and at 

 twenty-five years 1,000 pounds per 

 acre. This planting was given poor 

 care for years, but during the last few 



years has been well caied for, which 

 care is rellected in the increased yields. 



A prominent grower in the Dundee 

 district, which is the leading producing 

 district of the slate, estimates that the 

 average production per aire Ihere, with 

 orchards ranging between fifteen and 

 twenty-four years of age, to be about 

 800 pounds per acre. However, he says 

 that 25 i)er cent of the trees (it is a 

 seedling district) do not yield enough 

 to pay expenses and should be top 

 worked with scions from good bearing 

 trees. This would bring the average 

 yield up close to 1,000 pounds per acre. 

 These nuts sell ordinarily at from 14 

 to 17 cents per pound, but the last year 

 the growers there received 20 to 25 

 cents. 



There are no mature grafted orchards 

 in the state, but it seems reasonable to 

 figure that proper varieties of grafted 

 trees should yield somewhat more 

 heavily than these seedling orchards. 

 In California, where both types of trees 

 have been grown alongside for years, 

 the grafted ones have so performed that 

 most of the new plantings being set out 

 are of this type of tree. 



The newcomer to the nut game will 

 hear a great deal of confiicting talk re- 

 garding the relative merits of the seed- 

 ling and the grafted orchard. A brief 

 sketch of the history of the English 

 walnut on the west coast of America 

 may be of interest while on this sub- 

 ject. The very first walnuts planted in 

 Western America were of the hard-shell 

 type, small thick-shelled nuts, that were 

 planted in Southern California by the 

 early Mission fathers. In 1807, a Cali- 

 fornian, Joseph Sexton by name, pur- 

 chased a sack of nuts, supposedly from 

 Chile, on the Frisco market and planted 

 them in Southern California. Of the 

 250 trees that he brought to a bearing 

 age from these nuts, sixty produced 

 nuts of the paper-shelled type, the 

 remainder ])roducing hard shells like 

 the parent nuts. These soft-shell nuts, 

 being so supei'ior to their hard-shell 

 parents, were i)lanted in the nursery. 

 When the resulting seedlings came to 

 bear they were found to produce nuts 

 of all types from hard shell to paper 

 shell. Among Ihese t>pes was one in- 

 termediate between the hard shell and 

 the paper shell. It was called the Santa 

 Barbara soft shell. Seedlings grown 

 from Ihese soft-shell seedlings gave rise 

 to the great walnut industry of South- 

 ern California. 



A great deal of variation was appar- 

 ent among Ihese seedlings trees, some 

 bearing heavier crops of better nuts 

 than others. Many of the growers 

 planted seed from these superior trees, 

 but while this pi'ocedure gave a better 

 average of desirable trees than where 

 the seed was taken indiscriminately in 

 the oichard, yet the variation in the 

 resulting trees was too great and too 

 few of the trees proved to be as good 

 as their i)arents. Hence some of the 

 better growers began llie practice of 

 producing trees by giMlting seedlings 

 with scions taken from the best trees 

 in the orchards. In this manner they 

 obtained trees lliat rclidned the char- 

 acters of the parent tr; s. In this way 

 Placentia Perfection, Prolific, EI Monte 



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. iv 182 Fiftn Jtreot 



""■^^vi^ Sun Francisco 



- California 



and otluM- largely grown California 

 variftii'S originated. All of the trees 

 of each of tliese varieties trace their 

 ancestry hack to a single tree which 

 was propagated from because of its 

 superiority over other seedlings. In 

 each case the i)arcnt tree was a seed- 

 ling. 



Most of the new plantings in both 

 California and Oregon are of grafted 

 trees. Few well-inforincil growers are 

 reconinicnding the planting of scea- 

 lings. However, the mere fact that one 

 Continued on page 19 



