Pecans, an Important Florida Crop 
C. A. Simpson, Monticello 
Some thirty to fifty years ago, a great 
many pecan nuts were planted in yards 
and small orchards, all over the northern 
part of Florida. At that time it was 
thought if you planted a large fine qual¬ 
ity nut, it would reproduce the same large 
fine quality pecan. This, however, did 
not prove to be true, as most of the trees 
are now bearing a rather small nut, al¬ 
though some are of fair size, and most of 
them of fine quality. But the planting of 
these nuts at this time was the beginning 
of the pecan industry in Florida. Today 
many fine majestic shade trees make the 
home surroundings beautiful, and in some 
cases one pecan tree more than pays the 
annual taxes of the home. Some of these 
seedlings were so promising, that a name 
was given, and nurserymen secured prop¬ 
agating wood from them. 
The pecan was first propagated in a 
small way in the early nineties, but not till 
between 1905 and 1910 was it propagated 
on a large scale. Since then, except for 
the years of real depression, the supply 
of pecan trees has barely kept pace with 
the demand. This next season it is expect¬ 
ed there will be at least 300,000 trees ship¬ 
ped out of Monticello alone. 
Since 1906 thousands of acres have 
been planted in the cotton states of the 
South, sometimes from one to five thou¬ 
sand acres being planted by one organiza¬ 
tion. In our own State there are a good 
many orchards of 100 to 500 acres, a few 
of 1,000 acres, and one was planted some 
few years ago of 4,600 acres. 
The orchards that were planted ten and 
fifteen years ago, and properly taken care 
of, are now producing for their owners 
very satisfactory returns. In fact, the re¬ 
turns have been so satisfactory that the 
real cotton farmer now realizes he should 
have planted 10 to 100 acres long ago and 
is correcting his mistake by planting now 
for the future. 
I know of one farmer in Georgia who 
rented a farm a few years ago for a cash 
rent of $900.00. That year happened to 
be a poor year for farming and low prices 
for farm products, and he failed to sell his 
farm crops for enough to pay his rent. It 
so happened this farm had a frontage on a 
main highway, and along this roadside 
and along a short lane leading to the farm 
house, were planted 65 pecan trees, then 
eleven years old. The nuts gathered from 
those 65 trees, which is the eqpivalent of 
3 1-5 acres, sold for $1,050.00. This en¬ 
abled him to pay his $900.00 cash rent 
and $150.00 over. Farmers in Florida 
should take this incident to heart and plant 
all their road frontage to pecan trees, 
wherever they will do well. Just think 
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