How This Booklet Happened 
I was born loving trees. The fact 
that a distant cousin who lived in 
Washington, D. C., sold to a neighbor- 
ing grocer a barrel of English Walnuts 
almost every year from a tree in his 
yard, and got 25-30 cents a pound for 
them, quite heated up my youthful 
imagination. In 1895 I started farm- 
ing on a dairy farm in northern Vir- 
ginia, but I though it would be a lot 
easier to make a living picking up 
English Walnuts from off the grass 
than it would be to serve as nursemaid 
to a lot of cows, morning and evening, 
Sundays and holidays; and so, the very 
first spring I planted out two acres of 
English Walnut trees, which I secured 
from a New Jersey nursery. I also 
planted some seed from the good tree 
in Washington, D. C. 
The Washington seedlings grew nice- 
ly for the first summer, but for some 
mysterious reason they froze back the 
first winter. My two acres of New 
Jersey seedlings were 3 feet high when 
planted, 2 feet high the next year, 1 
foot high the year after. ‘They were 
seedlings, probably from imported nuts 
grown in sunny Italy and they winter- 
killed in the usual way. 
Fifteen years later 25 acres of grafted 
paragon Chestnuts were killed by the 
blight. 
After more than 50 years of study 
and experimenting with nut trees, I 
have learned quite a bit about nuts, 
and consequently am in a position to 
save you many years of experimenting 
by letting you benefit by what I have 
learned. 
During the period of my experiment- 
ing a new era has come into nut grow- 
ing in the northern United States—the 
era during which we have learned how 
to graft Walnuts and Hickories. We 
can now find the one rare tree of 
Shagbark, Shellbark, Walnut, Chestnut, 
Pecan, or Hiccan, and by budding or 
grafting make an orchard of them, just 
as they do of Baldwin apples or Navel 
oranges. 
This matter of grafting nut trees is a 
recent acquisition. For years I experi- 
mented and got 2 or 3 per cent. One 
year I had such good success hat I had 
a surplus of trees beyond my experi- 
mental needs and Started selling them. 
Now, as a result of my 50 years’ ex- 
periments, I can make one general rec- 
ommendation: Nut trees are grand for 
your yard almost anywhere in the 
United States. By all means plant 
them. Some varieties are good for 
commercial planting. 
Shade Trees That Bear Nuts 
Nut trees are more interesting than 
maples, as majestic as elms, as beauti- 
ful as any tree—and they also bear 
nuts, nuts that are good to eat or to 
sell. You cannot say that of maples 
or elms or any of the common shade 
trees that grow in our yards. Also nut 
trees are fun. 
The time has now come to plant nut 
trees for shade in dooryard, lawn, lane, 
pasture, and poultry yard. I can fill 
out your grounds completely and beau- 
tifully, to say nothing of the interest, 
fun, and profit you will have from the 
nuts. 
Nut Trees for the North 
I now have grafted nut trees ready 
for any tree lover from Maine to Mich- 
igan and Minnesota, from Boston to 
Omaha, from Washington to Memphis, 
and on down into the Cotton Belt. 
True, my nursery is in Virginia, but 
wait—it is in northern Virginia, only 
95 miles south of the latitude of Phila- 
delphia. It is on the Blue Ridge Moun- 
tains, at an altitude of 800 to 1400 feet. 
I have measured 26 inches of snow on 
the level. We have recently had tem- 
peratures of 10° F. or more below zero. 
Our absolute minimum of record ac- 
cording to the U. S. Weather Bureau is 
—20° F., which is lower than that of 
Philadelphia, New York or Boston. But, 
much more important than these, is 
the fact that I grow northern strains 
of trees. My Pecans are grafted on 
seedlings that grew from Indiana, Mis- 
souri, and Iowa seed. The varieties are 
northern Pecans from near the corner 
of Indiana, Illinois and Kentucky. My 
Honey Locust seed comes from Ne- 
braska. My Persimmon seed comes from 
Nebraska, with one variety that has 
stood the rigors of that state. 
Blight Resistant Oriental Chestnuts 
If you are 45 or 50 years old and 
happen to have been brought up in 
the country almost anywhere between 
southern Maine, Buffalo, and western 
North Carolina, you probably remem- 
ber your childish delight in seeing the 
brown shell of Chestnuts glistening in 
the autumn grass and leaves, the thrill 
of their smooth surface as your fingers 
picked them up, one after the other, 
and filled your pockets and your youth- 
ful appetite. 
