July, 1920 



BETTER FRUIT 



Page 21 



Filbert Culture in County of Kent, England 



By A. A. Quarnberg, Vancouver, Washington 



LAST summer I made a trip to Eng- 

 land for the purpose of studying 

 filbert culture in a country where fil- 

 berts have been successfully cultivated 

 for centuries. The county of Kent, sit- 

 uated in the southeastern portion of the 

 country is the principal filbert produc- 

 ing section of England, especially in the 

 vicinity of Maidstone in the Medway 

 Valley. In this country thousands of 

 acres of land are devoted to filbert cul- 

 ture. I very much enjoyed my little 

 daily excursions into the many differ- 

 ent vigorous and systematically trained 

 and pruned filbert orchards. These ex- 

 cursions gave me the opportunity and 

 pleasure of meeting a number of the 

 most prominent and successful growers 

 and of discussing with them the various 

 phases of filbert culture. Thereby I 

 gained much valuable information con- 

 cerning the practices in vogue. 



The county of Kent has a mild and 

 genial climate, much like that of the 

 Pacific Northwest. The surface of the 

 country is rolling. The soil is a gravelly 

 loam with some chalk; it is generally 

 well drained and fertile. 



Judging from the flourishing condi- 

 tion of the vegetation generally, the cli- 

 matic conditions seem to be favorable 

 for the growing of filberts as well as 

 other fruit common to that region. 



In Kent, the filbert or cob nut is to 

 a great extent grown in alternate rows 

 with other species of fruit, such as 

 apples, pears, and plums; the filbert 

 trees usually being planted from 24 to 

 30 feet each way, making the distance 

 between the trees in the mixed orchard 

 from 12 to 15 feet apart. In these mixed 

 orchards the filbert trees are pruned 

 low and not allowed to grow more than 

 six feet in height, while the other fruit 

 trees are headed high and trained to a 

 position above the low headed filbert 

 trees. Often the apples, pears and 

 plums form a dense cover over the cob 

 nuts and yet the latter were said to 

 bear well, though not so abundantly as 

 in more open spaces. 



In some of the older orchards, many 

 of the standard fruit trees had died of 

 old age and the cob nut trees occupied 

 all the space. In such cases the filberts 

 frequently had a spread of over 20 feet 

 across the top, but still they were not 

 allowed to grow over the standard six 

 feet in height. 



In favor of the mixed orchard it was 

 claimed that the filberts and cob nuts 

 would withstand considerable shade 

 from other fruit trees and that gener- 

 ally some kind of a crop from the 

 different varieties of fruit could rea- 

 sonably be expected every year, so that 

 by this method the land would produce 

 a more regular income than when 

 planted to filberts alone. Such was the 

 case in 1919, when the cob nuts and 

 filberts had a short crop while there 

 was a good crop of cherries, apples, 

 pears, plums, etc. 



Cob nut and filbert trees planted 

 alone in orchard form were usually set 

 12 to 20 feet apart, or somewhat closer 

 than when interplantcd with other fruit 

 trees. 



In spite of an occasional failure or 

 short crop the Kent filbert growers 

 seemed to have full confidence in the 

 industry, claiming that the cob nuts and 

 filberts, on the average, paid as well as 

 fruit grown there, and, in my judgment, 

 Kent certainly is a good fruit section. 



While the filbert trees naturally did 

 best on good land, it was claimed that 

 the cob nuts and filberts were less ex- 

 acting as to soil and that they would 

 succeed on land quite unprofitable for 

 various kinds of fruit. It was also said 

 that rich and wet soils were expected 

 to produce much wood and yet fre- 

 quently yield less nuts. 



The variety of filbert most largely 

 grown in Kent is the so-called Kentish 

 cob, or Lambert, a variety with long 

 husk and shape much resembling our 

 Du Chilly, but probably a different 

 strain of that type of nut. Regarding 

 filbert and cob nuts, I will quote what 

 a technical Kent filbert man says: "The 

 old distinction between filberts and cob 

 nuts was that the first-named had long 

 husks or full beards, closing over the 

 nuts, and the cob only a short one 

 plainly showing the nut." This dis- 

 tinction has not been accurately re- 

 tained and the Kentish cob is by that 

 definition truly a filbert, but in Kent 

 all the short-husked nuts are generally 

 known as filberts and the long-husked 

 nuts as cob nuts. 



The Kentish cob is placed in the front 

 rank of the so-called market nuts be- 

 cause it is a large, attractive and good- 

 flavored dessert nut, and the tree is a 

 strong grower with great bearing qual- 

 ities. 



There are quite a number of other 

 varieties of filberts grown in Kent, but 

 of the short-husked and roundish 

 shaped nuts there were none which in 

 my opinion, in all-round good qualities 



would compare with our Pacific North- 

 west grown Barcelona. But whether 

 the Kentish cob, the chief nut in Kent, 

 on the average, is a better nut than our 

 Northwest Du Chilly, I am not pre- 

 pared to say. 



Concerning the question of pollina- 

 tion of the filbert, so important to us, 

 I did not learn much in Kent, mainly 

 because our own chief varieties, such 

 as Du Chilly and Barcelona, are not 

 grown there, and besides the growers 

 generally did not seem to have the mat- 

 ter of filbert pollination fully system- 

 atized. Any imperfection in this re- 

 spect may partly be explained by the 

 circumstance that the Kentish cob, the 

 variety chiefly grown there, to a great 

 extent appears to be self-fertile, at least 

 that seems to be the indication from the 

 fact that large blocks of Kentish cob 

 trees planted without any special pro- 

 visions for cross-poUination, were said 

 to be very productive. On the other 

 hand one of the best authorities on fil- 

 berts recommends the planting of one 

 Cosford cob to every 25 trees of Kent- 

 ish cob to insure good fertilization. The 

 Cosford was said to be a better pro- 

 ducer of catkins than the Kentish cob 

 and itself a thin-shelled, good flavored 

 nut. Another variety known as the 

 Red Barcelona, and an enormous pro- 

 ducer of catkins, was also reported to 

 be used as a pollinizer, but its nuts 

 were said to be small and of little com- 

 mercial value. 



A point considered of the greatest 

 importance in connection with the cul- 

 tivation of the filbert in Kent is the 

 pruning of the trees. To see and 

 study the close and systematic prun- 

 ing of the filbert tree and its results 

 was the main object of my visit. 

 And now after having visited and ex- 

 amined a number of the Kent filbert 

 orchards, it is my opinion that the thor- 

 ough and systematic pruning which the 

 growers are giving their trees undoubt- 



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