1428 



ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 



Nut Growing 



Nut growiiiK in America has been re- 

 duced to a commercial basis only within 

 the last few years. The pioneers of our 

 Eastern states could find nuts anywhere 

 — chestnuts, walnuts, hickorynuts, hazel- 

 nuts, pecans, beechnuts and acorns. On 

 beechnuts and acorns they fattened their 

 hogs, and gathered hickorynuts, walnuts 

 and other varieties of nuts for winter 

 use. Now that these forests are destroyed 

 and their crops of nuts have gone with 

 them, we are not producing these articles 

 of food in proportion to the demand, and 

 the amounts that we consume are most- 

 ly shipped from Europe, from whence 

 comes more than 75 per cent of our 

 supply. 



The fact that nuts grew wild in abun- 

 dance all over this country is evidence 

 that the climate and soil are well adapted 

 to them, as well adapted as any of the 

 parts of Europe where they are such 

 profitable crops. The only question seems 

 to be, "Will it pay?" This is the ever- 

 present question in the American mind, 

 one that should be clearly worked out and 

 intelligently met. 



Nut trees will pay because of the fruit 

 they will produce that can be put into 

 the market and sold at profitable prices, 

 because in future years the timber may 

 become valuable, and because if planted 

 on the hills they save the land from 

 barrenness and prevent the soil from 

 washing. This opens the whole question 

 of reforesting our denuded lands that 

 were once covered with an abundant 

 growth of valuable timber; a question 

 that has been discussed so much during 

 recent years that it is scarcely necessary 

 to enter Into it here. I have known wal- 

 nut groves planted in Illinois. Iowa, and 

 in other places in the Mississippi valley 

 two generations ago that have become 

 immensely valuable. One farm of IfiO 

 acres in Iowa was all planted to walnut 

 trees and sold for a price many times 

 greater than the value of the land with- 

 out the trees, because the walnut lumber 

 could be worked into furniture. 



Most people In considering the growing 

 of nuts have only the crop in mind, with 



its commercial value. They do not con- 

 sider the value of the timber, because 

 that belongs to another generation. They 

 do not consider the conservation of the 

 soil of the hillsides, for that also is in 

 the future. It is hard for some persons 

 to see anything that is so far distant that 

 they may not in the near future reap 

 profitable results from it. This is why so 

 many farmers give so little attention to 

 orcharding. In fact, it is why so many are 

 wage workers instead of farmers. They 

 do not want to plant the seed and wait six 

 months for the harvest. They want a 

 job and a pay check coming in every 

 month or perhaps oftener. However, there 

 are those who can sow and wait for the 

 coming crop, plant orchards and wait for 

 them to grow, plant forests and permit 

 their children or grandchildren to inherit 

 them, rather than to allow them to in- 

 herit bare rocks and yellow clay. 



Where Nut Trees Should Be Planted 



Nut trees will grow almost anywhere 

 from the rich alluvial soil of the bottoms 

 to the heavy clay of the hill tops. How- 

 ever, we would advise planting them, gen- 

 erally, on the rough hillsides where, be- 

 cause of the difficulty of cultivation, corn, 

 wheat, oats and potatoes cannot be easi- 

 ly grown. On the steep hillsides it is 

 not practical to grow apples, peaches, 

 pears, and other fruits on account of the 

 difficulty of spraying, picking and cul- 

 tivating. It is easy to see a contrast be- 

 tween the picking of fruits that are ten- 

 der and have to be handled with extreme 

 care, and hauled to the packing tables 

 in baskets on sleds, as compared with the 

 gathering of nuts that do not bruise in 

 picking and which require no care in 

 handling. We would therefore plant nuts 

 on these rougher hillsides, not because 

 they will not grow under other conditions 

 on flat lands, or lands that can be culti- 

 vated, but because these lands will pro- 

 duce other crops that are difficult to han- 

 dle, that require tender care, and can not 

 be well produced on the rougher lands 

 where nuts will grow. 



For instance, take the farm where the 

 writer was born in West Virginia. When 



