THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
99 
this territory has the whole world to supply. The markets 
of Europe want Pecans, willing to pay a big price and yet 
are unable to obtain any. At present we do not grow near 
enough for our own use. In 1900 we imported two million, 
nine hundred thousand dollars worth of nuts and in 1911, 
we imported fourteen and one-half million dollars worth. 
The American public is learning the value of nuts as food 
and, which already occupy a prominent place in the American 
dietary. 
We have unexcelled advantages over California in the 
marketing of Persian Walnuts. Instead of having to ship 
our product across the continent and being at the mercy of 
the railroads, we have the finest markets in the world right 
at our doors. Our season of ripening is a month earlier 
than in California, thereby placing our nuts on the market 
30 days before the California nuts and 60 days before the 
imported nut, obtaining a much higher price for our pro¬ 
duct. 
The beautiful Walnut, the stately Pecan, and the sturdy 
shag-bark with their dense, waxy, dark green foliage can be 
made to replace South and North, the millions of useless 
Poplar, Willows and other bunches of leaves which please 
the eye but render no valuable annual or final returns. The 
chief reason why this has not been done is because the 
people have not thought about it. 
The varieties desirable for northern planting are some¬ 
times called the “Indiana Group,’’ while some of the very 
finest of the Northern pecans have originated in Indiana, 
they could just as easily been have called the Ohio River 
Group or some other name applying to that section of the 
Ohio Valley of which Evansville, Indiana, is the center and 
extending about fifty miles into Kentucky, Illinois and 
Indiana. In this territory there are many thousands of 
wild Peean trees; and after an investigation extending 
through a number of years, there have been selected from 
these various wild groves, a few trees from which it has 
deemed d,esirable to propagate. In this connection I want 
to mention the valuable work that has been done along this 
line by Mason J. Niblack of Vincennes, Indiana, and Thomas 
P. Littlepage of Boonville, Indiana, and Washington, D. C. 
These men, with the assistance of others, throughout Indiana, 
have, for several years been making investigations of these 
Pecans with view of determining the most desirable varieties 
to propagate. It has been my privilege to have the benefit 
of the information gathered by these gentlemen, which, 
added to my own experience, has given me a fairly compre¬ 
hensive view of the desirable nuts in that section. 
If the farmers and orchardists were to put out ten to 
twenty arces of good Pecans on their land they would soon 
be surprised to find that this .small piece of land would be 
worth more money than all the rest of their farm. Ten 
acres of Pecan trees can be cultivated at less expense annually 
than ten acres of com and if the grove consists of the right 
varieties and has been properly cultivated, it will be worth 
not less than $500, per acre in ten years. In fact I do not 
know of a single grove of Pecan trees in the United States of 
the right varieties that has been properly cultivated that 
can be bought for $500 per acre at ten years of age, yet the 
principal reason that this very thing has not been done by 
the famiers throughout the Pecan belt is because they have 
not had sufficient information on the subject and have had 
no means of acquiring it and most important there were no 
trees to be had. 
I want to impress upon every one the absolute necessity 
of planting nut trees that are budded or grafted on our 
native seedling stock. Never plant root grafted trees or 
Southern varieties as these have been tested throughout 
the North and invariably kill back to the ground each winter. 
Budded and grafted nut trees bear very much younger than 
the seedlings. I also want to discourage the planting of 
seedlings, as they never reproduce in kind and productive¬ 
ness, especially the Pecan. Statistics show that only 40 
to 50 per cent of the seedlings Pecans ever bear fruit. An 
example of this may be found at New Harmony, Indiana, 
where Mr. Arthur Dransfield planted a grove of 300 seedling 
Pecans, of this number only one tree bears consecutive 
crops of good nuts. The grove is now 2 7 years old and only 
contains 113 trees. The others were all cut out. The 
majority never bore fruit at all. 
Promoters attack their quarry with a two edged sword; 
one edge is what they say, the other what they leave unsaid; 
and both edges are often keen. What the promoter does 
not say it is absolutely necessary to find out. Deduetions 
from experience in general and from knowledge of the busi¬ 
ness in particular will help and when these favor further 
investigation, there are two essentials for a wise decision: 
First, a study of the records of the promoters and second, 
a personal examination of the property. Your legitimate 
and well-bom, well-brought up promotion, fathered by 
ability and mothered by honesty, it is your problem to 
recognize, if this is what you are looking for, and to avoid 
the low born trickster. No one can tell you how to do this 
any more than he can tell you an easy way to graft Hickories, 
f It is well to emphasize the fact right here that nut trees 
purchased from nurseries cannot be purchased at a low price. 
The difficulty of propagating and getting them ready to 
transplant is too great for them to be sold at prices to com¬ 
pare with other fruit trees. But taking into consideration 
the few planted to the acre and the revenue derived from 
inter-cropping or fillers of quick bearing fmit trees or small 
fmits the cost is comparatively low. 
Fruit growing on its face presents ideal charms but study 
shows such an alarming array of bugs and blights, methods 
of pruning, armaments of sprays, unholy combinations of 
railroads and middlemen, that the heart grows faint. When, 
therefore, one reads that nut growing promises a degree of 
freedom from the spectres, the heart grows warm again. 
The question comes up. Will the Pecan produce as well 
here as in the South, where they are planting so many eom- 
mercial orchards? The Pecan is native of the alluvial 
river bottoms, while most of the commercial orchards have 
been planted on the pine upland, a large portion of which 
is very poor land and must be fertilized heavy each year. 
It is also a fact that some of the largest Pecan plantings 
are several hundred miles away from their native heath. 
In the Ohio Valley we have more favorable conditions be¬ 
cause most of the land is very fertile and requires little or 
no fertilizing. 
