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NEWS BULLETIN AND PRICE LIST 
SUNNY RIDGE NURSERY, JANUARY, 1946 — 
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_ Swarthmore, Pa. Aa Se 
THESE PRICES GOOD UNTIL JUNE Ist, 1946 : * ae 
j ices 
THE CHESTNUTS ARE COMING! THE CHESTNUTS ARE GOMING! ° 
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_The Chinese Chestnut has passed the experimental s 
I don’t mean to say that we shall not know more abou “them fifty, years fre 
now, but I have completed 20 years of experimentation with thém and ‘T:can. give 
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some conclusions which warrant you in planting them in chestnut climate in any, _ 
well drained soil that is not highly alkaline. 
Do you want to buy a chestnut tree no taller than you are which has already | 
produced nuts? We have some trees with that record. 
Here is an unsolicited letter: 
Ohio, October, 1944 — “I received a fine specimen (chestnut) from you in 
1942, which is doing fine and bearing its third crop.” | 
They were unusually precocious trees, but you may expect our Chestnut trees 
3 to bear sooner than apples if given as good care as the apple requires. 
NUTS IN 1949 OR SOONER 
The chances are about 20 to one in your favor that you will get chestnuts in 
1949 if you plant in 1946 as follows: Plant one or more of each of two varieties 
of our grafted varieties near to each other (about 30 or 35 feet). Keep grass and 
weeds away from the trees until September first for 2 seasons. Fertilize as our 
booklet directs and you are in for a 2 party or 3 party race depending on whether 
it is you and boys, or you, boys and squirrels. : 
THE’ THRILL OF GATHERING NUTS 
It thrills me to walk through the nursery in September ahd October and see 
the glossy brown nuts peeping out of opening burrs and to find nice nuts in the 
grass. 
My satisfaction at this has no relation to such earthly matters as eating. Nut 
trees are fun, as well as food supply. They give you a sense of achievement when 
you see them produce their nuggets of nutrition. 
WAR AND ACTS OF GOD 
Unfortunately there was a war and also unfortunately it did not make nut 
tree nurserymen rich or give them trees. It has almost put us out of business. 
War has increased the cost of our materials and supplies, made some un- 
available. War has cut off our source of seed for some important varieties. 
_ War more than doubled the rate of day’s wages for workmen in the last 
three years, and worse than that, it has naturally reduced the available supply 
and also the quality of service and 1946 has brought no relief. 
The act of God aspect of the matter showed up in the form of a drought in 
the summer of 1943 which greatly reduced the catch of our spring grafting and 
kept the trees from making half of the expected growth. It also killed thousands 
of late transplanted seedlings because we could not water them. Labor shortage 
kept us from planting them at the right time. 
God repeated the drought in 1944 and made it a little worse than in 1943. In 
~ 1945 he turned on summer in the middle of March, turned on March with freezes 
in April and again in May. This meteorological hash gave us the worst spring 
grafting season ever. THEREFORE OUR STOCKS ARE LOW and some of the 
trees are not as straight as I would like, but give them a few years and they will 
outgrow it. 
RECONVERSION 
I wish I had an automobile factory! Well not exactly, but I wish the nursery 
could recover from the war as quickly as the auto factory can. The little trees 
that did not get planted in 1942, and ’43, and ’44, and 45, because of the war, will | 
cause us at least four seasons of grief. 
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A f a iy Say BROT ON me + 
gé. It is time to plant. 
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