194 NUT GROWING 



"When I was a boy there was a black walnut tree 

 down by the river that had nuts as good as candy. 

 One spring we got to talking about it. Two or three 

 of us cut some grafts and my father put them in a 

 couple of young trees back of the stable, but the 

 grafts did not grow. I never heard about the ones 

 that were put in by the other fellows/' 



The difficulties in black walnut grafting have now 

 been disposed of by the new method. The author 

 has caught black walnut grafts freely not only upon 

 stocks of the same species but also upon stocks of 

 the Japanese walnut, the Persian walnut, and the 

 butternut. Any one with money enough for buying 

 a good dinner has money enough for buying a 

 grafted black walnut tree. The dinner would quickly 

 belong to past history, but the tree might live for a 

 couple of centuries and bear several thousand dol- 

 lars worth of nuts. 



As a purely business proposition the black walnut 

 orchard at the present moment probably offers op- 

 portunity for as secure an investment as may be 

 made in any department of agriculture. Ordinary 

 nuts of this species are now selling in the New York 

 retail market at twenty-five cents per pound, and the 

 trade is unable to get varieties of the sort that it asks 

 for by the ton. The tree will do its best in deep, 

 rich, well-drained soil of neutral or alkaline reac- 

 tion, but some of the most beautiful black walnuts 

 that I have seen are growing in thin, poor, sandy 

 soil on Long Island, where little else beside scrub 

 oaks, pitch pines, and blueberries thrive. In such 



