Large Profit in Growing 

 Walnuts 



LUTHBR BURBANK 



WHEN nut culture Is mentioned in California it is well to be specific, 

 for nearly every nut which grows in any temperate or semi-tropic 

 climate finds here a congenial home, and most of them thrive 

 even better than in their own native country. Nowhere else are 

 there so many kinds grown successfully, and our dry, sunny 

 autumn days insure a most uniformly well cured product, while 

 in most climates it is, even when ready to harvest, a very difficult matter to 

 secure the crop in prime condition. 



Although nearly all nuts can be grown well here, yet the Royal Walnut 

 (Juglans regia) will without doubt in some of its improved varieties always 

 be the leader. The Royal, long known in commerce under various names 

 such as Persian, English, French, Italian, Welch, European, Madera, Chill, 

 and later as the California walnut, has been cultivated for more than two 

 thousand years. It is a native of the Caucasus, Persia, and the Northern 

 mountains of India, and probably also of Western China. The Royal 

 walnut, the peach and the apricot were all derived originally from the same 

 region where they still may all be found growing wild. The nuts from the 

 wild native varieties have rather thick shells, are much smaller, not of as 

 good quality, and not so freely produced as with our greatly improved 

 cultivated ones. The name walnut came from an English corruption of the 

 word Caul — Gaulnut — (France) from which England even to-day draws 

 her principal supply. 



Royal walnuts have been common throughout Central and Southern 

 Europe from the Sixteenth century down to the present time, but for two 

 thousand years the crop has been mostly raised from seedling trees. If a 

 knowledge of the possibilities for improvement by selection and grafting 

 had been generally applied during this long time, these nuts would have 

 been a universal food throughout the whole earth, and productive trees of 

 superior varieties would have been common everywhere, though cold win- 

 ters have occasionally greatly injured and sometimes destroyed many of 

 the trees, even as far south as France and Germany where the timber is 

 much used for furniture and other purposes, and has been so highly prized 

 that bearing trees have sometimes been sacrificed for lumber, and for almost 

 two hundred years France has maintained an act to prevent the exportation 

 of walnut lumber. 



In America the Royal walnut grows as far north as New York and 

 New England. The trees were quite common on Manhattan Island 150 

 years ago, but later the march of improvement necessitated the removal 

 of most of them. The crop of nuts was, however, always very uncertain, 

 and not encouraging from a business point of view. 



In California the trees have been growing in widely separate regions 

 from the earliest times, but unfortunately, from nuts whose heredity 

 "harked back" to forms better adapted to the production of wood than 

 nuts and before the improved ones had been produced or introduced, the 

 trees were in production, mostly shining symbols of preverse uncertainty. 

 Our southern neighbors were the first to obtain some of the improved 

 varieties, and have been well repaid for their enterprise and foresight, for 

 nothing which grows on trees has generally paid better than walnuts, but 

 much had to be learned about varieties, soils, locations, modes of harvesting, 

 curing, marketing, etc. 



Central and Northern California are just waking up to the fact thai 

 no better walnuts have ever been produced than those grown right her«J 



