Shade for the Pasture Field 
A Pecan or other nut tree is a perfect 
shade tree for the pasture lot, and the 
animals standing under it will auto- 
matically fertilize it with their droppings. 
Such has been the history of many a nut 
tree with a famous bearing record. 
W. C. Reed. & Son, of Indiana, are pio- 
neer experimenters with northern Pecans. 
They report a crop as follows— 
“Crop varied from twenty to fifty 
pounds per tree; think two trees bore 
seventy-five pounds each, 
“Trees were planted twelve years ago 
on high clay land. 
“They have been cultivated regularly. 
“Were not fertilized, but were on good, 
strong land. 
“Trees are from thirty to thirty-five 
feet tall.” 
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 wouid 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 
10 
13 to 24 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 Busseron and 
one /ndiana as a minimum start to 
pollinate each other and then as many 
more as circumstances warrant, so that 
you may be sure to have an abundant fam- 
ily supply of delicious, nutritious nuts. 
You need two varieties. 
If you are in doubtful territory because 
of cool summers, omit the Greenriver 
variety because the Busseron and 
Indiana ripen earlier. 
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 
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. 
I moved a hundred bare root, 10-15 foot 
pecan trees. I cut off the tops and cut the 
branches back to short stubs. Ninety- 
eight lived and made a. few inches of 
growth. The next year they made twice 
as much growth—about a foot. They will 
be 15 to 20 years old when they go with 
ball of earth to their final lawns. 
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. 
