60 A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 



among the Japanese plums planted alternately between the chestnuts in each 

 direction. 



There is one point on which we need more light namely, the union of 

 stock and graft. Many of our trees show a considerable enlargement of the 

 stem above the union, evidently the Paragon portion growing more rapidly 

 than the native seedling stock. The question is, whether the union is perfect 

 or not. Sometimes I fear that the union will always be a weak spot in the tree, 

 and yet our Paragon at Woodbanks, which showed the enlargement from the 

 start, is apparently outgrowing the difference, the stock gradually catching 

 up with the grafted portion. 



PARAGON CHESTNUT CULTURE.. 

 By J. S. Woodward. 



Acting on the advice of The Rural New- Yorker, in the Spring of 1890, I 

 bought three Paragon Chestnut trees. They were planted in vacant places in 

 a grove of common Chestnuts. Two lived, and I am ashamed to acknowledge 

 that they have been utterly neglected, never having had any mulching or care 

 beyond being let alone. Neither of them is over seven feet high or three- 

 fourths of an inch in diameter of body, but this past summer one of them pro- 

 duced three burrs, each with three Chestnuts, and the other had seven burrs 

 with three nuts in each burr. Here was this little tree with twenty -one nuts, 

 each of the weight of four average nuts from the common trees. This would 

 make the crop equal to eighty-four common nuts. The number of nuts was a 

 surprise to me, and if the common trees in our grove had produced Chestnuts 

 in proportion, we would have had more than five hundred bushels. I tested 

 them in comparison with the common nuts, and gave them to others to taste; 

 all agreed that they were equally good. I also showed them to a dealer in 

 our city, and while the common nuts were selling for $5 per bushel, he said he 

 would gladly pay $8 for such as these. 



In the Spring of 1892, we sent a hired man into our Chestnut grove to cut 

 down some other trees which were groVing there. Through a misunderstand- 

 ing of the order, he cut some forty Chestnuts before we discovered what he 

 was doing. The trees cut varied from four to eight inches in diameter. To 

 make the best, of the situation, we let the sprouts grow about the stumps, as 

 the quickest way to repair the damage. These sprouts made a growth of eight 

 feet on an average and last spring I sent for scions of Paragon and Numbo, and 

 grafted from three to five sprouts about each stump. I had the impression that 

 it was very difficult to successfully graft the Chestnut and so I took great pains 

 in doing the work. I selected scions and stocks as nearly of the same size as 

 possible and used the splice or tongue system of grafting, winding well with 



