
This figure shows how important it is to keep your trees away from a frost pocket. By 
watching a row of thermometers all winter a United States Weather Bureau observer 
got these remarkable facts from a Califorma hillside. The figures above the curve, 
which represents the slope of the hill, show the average temperatures at the different 
elevations for 45 clear nights. Figures below the line show temperatures for one clear 
cold might. The temperatures near the top show the “Thermal Belt’ so common 
on mountain slopes. From Men & Resources, an interesting book by J. Russell Smith, 
Harcourt Brace & Co., N. Y. 
Plant Chestnuts 
The Chinese Chestnut is a splendid 
dooryard tree. It is such fun to pick up the 
nuts. Personally I am planting several 
hundred trees for commercial Chestnut 
growing, and I have sold several large 
orders for that purpose. In one case the 
purchaser expects to let the pigs harvest 
the crop. In this respect he will be dupli- 
eating the centuries-old experience of 
southern France, Spain, and Italy, where 
Chestnut orchards cover whole mountain- 
sides and have supported a rather dense 
population for more than a_ thousand 
years, In these European areas the pig 
only comes in as a gleaner after the main 
crop has been picked up for human food 
and to serve as grain food for horses, 
cows, sheep and goats. 
Some of the larger Japanese varieties 
(trees not yet on the market) promise to 
give more grain food per acre than can be 
depended upon from corn. The burrs open, 
the nuts fall out, and the pigs will do the 
harvesting, provided we don’t eat the nuts 
ourselves. 
The Northern Pecan 
If you want to make your place a dis- 
tinguished landmark, plant two balanced 
6 
Pecan trees of the same variety and give 
them a chance. I have seen these trees 
towering thirty feet above the tops of the 
oak forests in Indiana. I have seen them 
six feet in diameter, with more than 100 
feet spread. They are truly lordly trees, 
and will bear nuts for centuries. One 
particular tree in southern Illinois was 
full of nuts when the first white man saw 
it in 1817. It is reported that it only 
missed three crops in the next 97 years, 
and it is still going strong. Ordinarily 
Pecan trees, like most apple trees, alter- 
nate their heavy and lght crops. 
Many think of the Pecan as a southern 
tree because trees producing fine nuts 
were propagated in the South and the in- 
dustry started in the Cotton Belt. But 
the Pecan tree grows wild and ripens its 
nuts in southeastern Iowa, in south- 
western Ohio, and thence downstream to 
the Gulf of Mexico. George Washington 
called them “Illinois nuts” because the 
ones he had came from Illinois. He is said 
to have been very fond of them, often 
carried them in his pocket and ate them 
at unexpected times. His diary reports the 
planting of these nuts, and the trees he 
planted at Mount Vernon are still 
thriving. 
