ORCHARD CARE 139 



alfalfa or sweet clover, have such long roots that 

 they pump water out of the soil from a depth far 

 below that reached by roots of young nut trees. On 

 that account peanuts, soy beans, and various short 

 root clovers are preferable. Even these should not 

 be grown too near to the nut trees. We must re- 

 member that their roots are constantly drawing to- 

 ward themselves all of the water and nourishment 

 that will respond to their invitation to come. Profit- 

 able bearing of the nut orchard will be delayed in 

 proportion as we wish to make other things profit- 

 able when grown upon the same land. It is a ques- 

 tion of relative values. If one has land enough it 

 is better to plan to get nothing but nuts from the 

 nut orchard and to hurry the trees into profitable 

 bearing. 



Although some trees when grafted upon nursery 

 stock will begin to bear in two or three years we 

 have to estimate the time of really prolific bearing 

 very much as it would be estimated for apple trees. 

 It is not always best to allow nut trees to bear when 

 young, and if all of the nuts are removed for the 

 first three or four years it will allow the tree to put 

 that much extra energy into 1 growth. Before the 

 chestnut blight came a Pennsylvania chestnut grower 

 told me that he made a net profit of thirty thousand 

 dollars in one year on grafted chestnuts and no tree 

 in his orchard was over fourteen years of age, most 

 of them much younger. Many of the trees in this 

 orchard, however, were grafted upon shoots from 

 cut-over chestnut stumps with old roots. There 



