PEANUT AND PECAN 



509 



it causes the nuts to blight or not fill out. The blooms do not require to be 

 covered. 



Harvesting. Peanuts should be harvested when ripe, and not allowed to 

 stand too long, in hopes that the last ones set out will nil out and ripen, as 

 you lose more than you gain. The little ones spoil. the sale of the crop, and 

 many are left in the ground that get over-ripe. Peanuts should be cut or 

 plowed out and thrown into windrows, nuts down, and let lie a week or ten 

 days, and then sacked, as the best nuts are cured in that way, and they do not 

 mold so badly, and cure a better color. They must not be allowed to get wet. 

 The tops are good feed if stored away in a shed for winter use. All kinds of 

 stock like them, and small nuts can be left on the vines. The} make the best 

 chicken feed. An average yield is about twenty-five to thirty sacks to the acre, 

 forty pounds to a sack, but many have raised fifty sacks, with extra care and 

 good land well adapted to peanuts. 



THE PECAN 



The pecan, by rapid growth early fruiting, and ^general thrift, 

 seems to be the member of the hickory family best fitted for Cali- 

 fornia conditions. A tree grown from a nut planted by J. R. Wolf- 

 skill, on Putah Creek, in 1878 was, when twenty-five years old, 

 over fifty feet high, with a trunk twelve inches in diameter, grow- 

 ing luxuriantly and bearing freely. Still older trees, also very sat- 

 isfactory in growth and bearing, are to be seen at Chico and Visa- 

 lia. The pecan, though grown for thirty years by different parties 

 around the bay of San Francisco, either does not bear or keeps the 

 nuts hanging on until sometimes they sprout on the tree. The 

 wider extremes in temperature or in humidity in the interior seem 

 to teach the tree better habits of growth, and rest and moist low- 

 lands in the great valleys seem best for pecan planting. As yet, 

 California has no marketable product of pecans but the total num- 

 ber of trees in the state is insignificant. 



Pecan trees grow readily from the nuts if these are fresh. Plant- 

 ers should secure nuts of selected varieties (for there is a great dif- 

 ference in size and quality) direct from growers in the southern 

 States, and plant as soon as received, in the early winter, or if 

 conditions are not favorable for planting, the nuts should be stored 

 as described in Chapter VIII. Nuts planted in good nursery 

 ground in rows as there suggested, and covered about two inches 

 or a little deeper in dry, loose soil, and then mulched to retain mois- 

 ture, will germinate freely. The trees should be transplanted to 

 permanent place at the end of the first year and then usually the 

 taproot can be retained, as some growers deem very desirable ; if 

 the trees are to be put in permanent place later they should be 

 transplanted in the nursery and the taproot cut off. The nuts can, 

 of course, be planted at once in permanent place if one will take 

 the extra trouble necessary to properly care for them. 



