You have no overhead charge in pasture 
shade trees. It is overhead charge that 
kills so many farm profits. 
Twenty or fifty or a hundred pounds of 
Pecans per tree at a harvest would make 
your shade trees look good in more ways 
than one, and Pecan trees live for two or 
three hundred years. 
Planting Pecan trees in a meadow is 
policy. As soon as the trees are established 
it is a paid-up policy. That is why I am 
planting my 50 acres of creek bottom pas- 
ture in the Philadelphia climate of North- 
ern Virginia Piedmont. 
Pecan Roots 
The Pecan tree is not the nurseryman’s 
joy. It has perfectly fiendish tap roots. 
The first year the little tree is about the 
size of a straw and the length of a lead 
pencil, but the root is the size of a lead 
pencil and twice as long, and I don’t know 
whether the top ever catches up in bulk 
with the roots. I never saw all the roots of 
even a three-year-old Pecan tree, and if 
you had all the roots you would not know 
what in the world to do with them, be- 
cause you would have to have a hole 
probably 5 or 6 feet deep and perhaps 8 or 
10 feet wide. Because of this long root 
habit all our trees are transplanted, but 
even then digging them up is a major 
surgical operation. We cut the tops back 
heavily to balance the loss of root, and ex- 
pect to pet the trees for the first two sea- 
sons while they are getting reestablished. 
After that they will, if well fed, grow from 
13 to 23 feet on the terminals per year, 
and are really very effective shade trees, 
with a beautiful tropical appearance. 
While I am myself planting 50 acres of 
them commercially in an alluvial meadow 
pasture near the nursery, I do not recom- 
mend the practice to my neighbors, unless 
they are exceptionally situated. What I 
recommend to you is one Kentucky tree, 
to be sure you have pollen, and then from 
two to a dozen Busserons and Green- 
rivers, so that you may be sure to have an 
abundant family supply of delicious, 
nutritious nuts, 
If you are in doubtful territory because 
of cool summers, omit the Greenriver 
variety because the Busseron ripens its 
nuts earlier than Greenriver. 
Many nurseries will sell you seedling 
Pecan trees at a very cheap price. If you 
buy them with any expectation of nuts, 
the chances are 999 to 1 that you will be 
greatly disappointed. You can also buy 
10 
very cheap grafted Pecan trees from the 
South. They will make nice shade, but 
their nuts can be depended upon not to 
ripen north of the Cotton Belt, where they 
originated. 
Pecan Varieties 
Busseron (V,* 
upper edge). Early bearer, 
Greenriver (V, lower edge). 
plumper kernel than Busseron 
days later. 
Kentucky (V, upper edge). Good pollen 
producer, good nut, but not so productive 
as Busseron and Greenriver. 
warm locations only in 
early to ripen. 
Slightly 
and 10 
The Shagbark 
Tree for the Northern Range 
The Shagbark is the safe, sure tree for 
the man of the North. The tree grows wild 
over almost all of northeastern United 
States. 
Tens of thousands of farm boys have 
delighted to pick up Shagbarks all the 
way from Maine to Iowa, from Michigan 
to western North Carolina, and most of 
these boys have noticed that the nuts 
from some trees yield their kernels much 
more easily than others. In fact, the wild 
nut trees differ almost as much as wild 
apple trees, with here and there one that 
might be called a tree genius because its 
nuts are so much better than the rest. 
Search by the Northern Nut Growers 
Association 
This organization of persons interested 
in nut trees in the North (George L. Slate, 
Secretary, Geneva Experiment Station, 
Geneva, N. Y.) has been offering prizes 
and searching for the best wild nut trees 
in America for the last 25 years. As a re- 
sult of this search many Shagbarks of un- 
usual quality have been found. At least 
60 varieties are now under test. Some of 
them yield many of their kernels in com- 
plete halves, so that the time has come 
for the Shagbark to become a lawn tree 
of double merit. 
The Growth of the Shagbark Tree 
This tree, like the Pecan, also is not 
a nurseryman’s delight. We can buy an 
apple root in December, graft it in Feb- 
ruary, plant it out in April, and have a 
* The Roman V refers to zones on Rehder’s 
Map, page 7 
