ROBBING'S FRUIT GROWERS' GUIDE 



33 



with no care and still they were loaded to the guards 

 with nuts. Chestnut culture has always been a prob- 

 lem in the Eastern States when it came to growing 

 European and Japanese types, and now that the blight 

 has made such a serious invasion into the great chestnut 

 forests of the East, there can be no possible excuse for 

 the Pacific Coast States not engaging in this industry 

 which is so promising. The trees attain a very old age 

 and a great size. The grafted varieties should always 

 be given the preference, for they not only come into 

 bearing earlier but in addition to this the nuts are of 

 uniform size and shape. For orchard planting the 

 trees should never be planted closer than thirty feet. 

 As an avenue or border tree there is nothing more 

 beautiful than the chestnut. 



PRUNING 



After the head of the tree is once formed its pruning 

 in subsequent years should be confined to the removal 

 of interfering branches and to the checking of the growth 

 of a branch which may be drawing the tree out of shape. 



STOCKS 



Seedlings for budding and grafting the Improved 

 French and Japanese varieties are raised from seeds of 

 the Italian chestnut (Castanea vesca). 



GATHERING AND STORING 



Chestnuts are gathered in October. In the warmer 

 sections, where during the summer months there is no 

 rain, they ripen earlier than this. As soon as the burrs 

 begin to split open they are knocked off the trees with 

 poles. The nuts that do not come out of the burrs in 

 falling from the tree are picked out by hand. They are 

 then packed in barrels and shipped to market. They 

 will keep for some time if handled in this manner with- 

 out deteriorating. To keep them in good condition for 

 a number of months they should be placed in a recep- 

 tacle and have boiling water poured over them. After 

 being immersed for fifteen to twenty minutes, spread 

 them out on trays until they are dry. 



VARIETIES OF COMMERCIAL VALUE 



Marron de Lyon, Marron Combale, Numbo, Para- 

 gon, Ridgely. 



THE PECAN 



Of the eight or nine species of hickories the one which 

 produces the most marketable fruit and in the most 

 profitable quantities is the pecan. A native of the 

 Southern States, it is today the only nut (which has any 

 commercial importance) which is grown there, and 

 to a limited extent in the Middle States. Texas is 

 probably the largest producer of pecans, the crop 

 aggregating several millions of pounds. Gathered 

 largely from seedling trees. The business of cracking 

 pecans and selling the meats put up in attractive pack- 

 ages has created a demand for the nuts which is in- 

 creasing at a very rapid rate. It is largely due to the 

 impetus the industry has received in recent years that 

 has encouraged the planting of trees on a commercial 



scale of the improved paper-shell types. The difficulty 

 of extracting the meat from the hard-shell seedling nuts 

 has been one of the causes for their not being more 

 popular as a dessert fruit. The thin shells of the im- 

 proved types, the ease with which the meats are re- 

 moved, and the noticeable absence of the fibrous seg- 

 ments found in the hard-shell nuts, which possess a 

 peculiar acrid taste, will do much to make them popular. 



Old seedling pecan trees are found growing and pro- 

 ducing heavy crops annually in the Sacramento and 

 San Joaquin valleys. A number of seedling trees, two 

 feet and over in diameter, are growing one mile north 

 of Fresno, bearing abundant crops. 



It is only within the last ten years that pecans have 

 been regarded of sufficient commercial importance to 

 cause groves to be planted in the Middle and Southern 

 States, and the condition of affairs has been brought 

 about by the unexcelled merit of the paper-shell pecan. 

 In California only a very few paper-shells are to be 

 found; none of these are over fifteen years old, with the 

 most complete assortment of varieties growing on one 

 of my properties. 



CONDITIONS FAVORING ITS GROWTH 



The trees thrive in a great variety of soils, doing 

 well in a stiff clay or porous sand, and in Texas they 

 are said to do well on soils underlaid with hardpan, pro- 

 vided proper precautions are taken to blast it before 

 planting. The planting of trees should be confined to 

 soils where moisture is either supplied by natural means 

 or irrigation. Pecans will prove a valuable acquisition 

 to our list of nut fruits in the warm interior valleys of 

 California, Oregon and Washington. In the coast 

 counties, although the tree grows well, it does not ma- 

 ture its nuts, due to the cool, foggy weather, which does 

 not seem conducive to the proper development of the 

 nuts before the dormant season sets in. 



For planting along irrigation ditches, the pecan is 

 the ideal tree, as it will thrive without cultivation and 

 ripens its nuts after the water is turned out of the 

 ditches. 



The advisability of planting only named varieties of 

 grafted or budded trees is conceded by experienced 

 planters. When trees are grown from selected paper- 

 shell seeds, they are liable to produce nuts of variable 

 character in shape, size, thickness of shell and quality 

 of meat. The additional cost of growing named varie- 

 ties either by budding or grafting is caused by the very 

 small percentage which a nurseryman succeeds in grow- 

 ing. If the orchardist will only bear in mind that the 

 increased outlay for budded or grafted trees is offset by 

 the fact that they will come into bearing in less than 

 half the time that seedlings do, and that the nuts will 

 sell for four times as much on the market, their economy 

 is at once obvious. 



The pecan, like the walnut, is unisexual; that is, the 

 male and female organs are not in the same blossom. 

 It sometimes happens that the male blooms (catkins) 

 mature and release their pollen grains before the pistil- 

 late or female bloom is in the receptive stage, and when 

 this occurs the nuts are hollow shells and it is therefore 

 advisable in planting a pecan grove to plant two or 



