A TREATISE ON NUT CULTURE. 101 



By using dynamite for loosening the soil, the tree will in the same length 

 of time have grown from four to five feet above, with roots proportionately 

 deep. 



The cost per tree for the dynamite should not exceed twenty cents, and it 

 has accomplished a work which benefits the tree for years. 



No American tree has so few insect enemies as the Pecan. Here we have \ 

 none worthy of notice. The sap and leaf have an acrid taste, which repels such J 

 insects as infest most trees. 



A great advantage in planting the Pecan nuts is that you can see what you 

 plant, and can depend upon the product of your trees being same as seed 

 planted. Professor Steele says fully ninety per cent, (if not one hundred) can 

 be depended upon. This is better as well as cheaper than to buy the trees, even 

 if all right. 



Cultivated trees bear with more regularity than those of wild growth. We j 

 have the wild trees, that we know have borne annual crops for the past six years 

 in succession. The Pecan will grow to the height of seventy-five feet, with / 

 wide spreading branches, is symmetrical in shape, with very luxuriant dark-' 

 green foliage, late in coming out in the Spring, but retaining its leaves until 

 late in the Fall. 



While of the same family as the Black Walnut and Hickory, the Pecan is 

 of a lower spreading habit than the latter, making a denser shade. The wood 

 is just as valuable for use as the hickory, and very much like it in its texture. 



Planting thirty-five by thirty -five feet apart is a good distance for perma- 

 nent growth, but very much can be added in profit per acre for ten or twelve 

 years by planting another Pecan tree in center of each square, which will give 

 you sixty-one trees per acre. Until the trees are large enough for the limbs to 

 touch each tree adjoining, you are receiving the earnings of twenty-five trees 

 in addition. When necessary, the center trees can be cut out, and you have 

 then thirty-six trees left per acre, which, by this time, should yield as great 

 earnings as the whole sixty-one will in the earlier years of growth. ' 



From the growing interest in Pecan culture in all sections of the country, 

 it is evident that the people appreciate the value of these trees as money pro- 

 ducers. The small cost of starting a grove, their long life, surety of bearing, 

 requiring but little care or expense, being so largely in their favor over other 

 nut or fruit trees. A grove of only ten acres, planted in the best thin shell, will, 

 earn more than fifty acres in ordinary crops. 



FORT WORTH, TKXAS. 



