H. Harold Hume

“ Within the last ten or fifteen years it has rapidly emerged from a wild or semi-wild condition to the status of an orchard nut. The foundations of its culture were laid a considerable time ago, but only now is it coming to its own, its well merited standing among the fruits of the country.
In any horticultural industry many questions must be asked of the plant, the soil, the climate, in short, of the plant in its environment. They must be answered aright, if the industry is to succeed. The newer the plant in cultivation, the more numerous the questions are, the more difficult to answer. ”

“ This is the ideal method of handling the crop, and the one method which enables the grower to secure the best price for his product.
In building up such a private trade, advertising must be resorted to, either through the newspapers, magazines and other channels, or by distributing samples of nuts. "Once a customer, always a customer" should be the motto for the grower to hold in mind, and every effort should be made and every precaution taken to see that the nuts, from year to year, are absolutely uniform in size, shape, and quality. ”

“ If an insect is to be successfully controlled, the grower must know something of its life-history, and particularly of its feeding-habits. Careful observation of the insect, while at its work of destruction, will frequently give a clue to the method of control. Many insects, like the caterpillars of the pecan, bud-moth and case-worm, obtain their food by biting off pieces of the leaves or other parts of the tree and swallowing the solid particles. ”

“ The great objection to grafted trees is the first cost, and yet, in the face of that objection, it is best to plant grafted trees even if fewer of them are planted. If grafted trees are out of the question, then plant seedlings and top-work them. Grow the seedlings from nuts if necessary; but to those who live in sections where pecans can be grown, let me say, plant pecan trees; plant budded or grafted trees if you can—but plant pecan trees. ”

“ The day is far distant when Frotscher, Schley, San Saba, Curtis, Georgia or other varieties of pecans will be known by name by the purchasing public, asked for in the markets and recognized when procured. But that time must and will come, and until then there is no danger of the industry being overdone, and not even then, because our population is constantly growing; because the pecan nut is being put to a variety of new uses, and as yet the export trade is comparatively undeveloped. ”

“ If given good soil and sufficient food supply, it grows quite rapidly, making a stately, vigorous, long-lived tree. In its native forests it is a giant tree, sometimes reaching a height of upwards of two hundred feet with a trunk of six feet. Isolated specimens, grown in the open, come to maturity with wide-spreading branches and the whole tree has an exceedingly graceful appearance. Wherever it will succeed, no other shade tree is so worthy of attention as the pecan, and in the fruiting area, beauty and healthful shade may be combined with utility. ”

“ Since two kinds of flowers are produced on the pecan, one bearing the pistils, the other stamens, the pollen must be transferred from the latter to the former in order that pollination may take place. In many plants the pollen is transferred from one plant or flower to another by means of insects; but in the pecan there are no bright colors, no nectar, no scent to attract insects to carry pollen, but, instead, the wind is the carrying agent and it needs no attractions. Pollen is produced in large quantities, necessarily so, since much of it is wasted. ”

“ Too little attention on the part of propagators has been given to the kind, source and quality of the seed used to raise stocks for propagation work. The main object held in view in making a selection for seed purposes is to get just as many nuts as possible in the pound. The result of this policy is, that, without question, inferior seedlings are often used for stock; they lack stamina and vigor. Frequently in a nursery of budded or grafted stocks, or in a young pecan orchard, a wide variation in the size and vigor of the trees can be noticed. ”

“ For the growth of the young trees, a larger amount of nitrogen and a relatively smaller amount of phosphoric acid and potash are required, while for older trees, the reverse is true. Phosphoric acid and potash are required by bearing trees for the formation of fruit. Consequently, when the pecan orchard comes into bearing, these materials should be increased in the fertilizer applied. If the soil is not very rich at the time of planting, good results will follow the use of a pound of good commercial fertilizer at the time of planting. ”

“ Shallow cultivation is all that is necessary after the first plowing. A weeder or light harrow will do the work. This shallow cultivation will preserve a dust mulch, a couple of inches or so in depth, and the loss of soil moisture by capillary action and evaporation will thereby be prevented; more moisture will be retained in the soil and the trees will be benefited accordingly.
Whether the orchard is planted in a crop or not, cultivation should begin about the time growth starts in spring. The ground should be plowed and leveled with a cultivator. ”

“ Beggarweed, velvet beans or soja beans will answer well in many localities. Allow these to make what growth they will, and, when dead and dry, plow them back into the soil. It may seem strange to cultivate a forest tree, but it is the plan to follow to get results. Good results could doubtless be secured by seeding the pecan orchard in alfalfa and using it for a hog pasture up to the ripening season.
Cultivation should not be prolonged too late. If it be, the trees will continue to grow later than they should. ”

“ On lands which have been cultivated for some time, these same crops should be sowed for one season previous to planting, at least. Every effort should be made to insure a good stand and a good growth. Inoculation of the seed with nitrogen-gathering germs will [Pg 92] help, and a good fertilizer, such as the one recommended for these crops elsewhere, should be applied. Nothing will insure a good growth in the young trees so well as the nitrogen and humus added to the soil by leguminous crops. Stable manure may also be used to advantage. ”

“ Every grower of the pecan should be a judge of pecan nuts, and the ideas of growers, while they may differ on certain minor points, should agree on the more important characters of the nut. To enable growers, nurserymen and judges to work on a common standard of merit, a scale of points, in which each individual characteristic of the nut may receive a certain fixed number of credits, is indispensable. ”

“ And when corn is grown, sow cowpeas at the last working of the crop, to enrich the soil. These legumes will add nitrogen to the soil and help to reduce the fertilizer bills, for nitrogen is the costliest of all the fertilizer materials which we buy.
Sometimes, it will not do to crop the orchard. A condition may have to be met, in which there is not enough water to supply both the trees and the growing crops and one or the other will suffer—the trees, usually. ”

“ Many of the pecan trees planted in groves have not fulfilled the hopes of their planters. These trees, raised from large selected nuts, for which the planters paid a dollar or more per pound, have not come true to seed. Some are irregular, shy bearers; others, when they do condescend to produce a few nuts, bear small-sized, inferior nuts, not larger than ordinary playing marbles, while some produce a large crop of good marketable nuts. Some are unhealthy, subject to the attacks of scab and rosette. ”

“ There is every reason to believe that scions have been taken from ordinary seedling trees of any kind, inserted in stocks and sold for the best varieties, and that a large number of trees have been substituted and sold for what they were not. The prospective planter must depend upon the honesty and integrity of the nurseryman, and should inform himself on this point.
The National Nut Growers' Association has done no greater service to the pecan industry than that which they have rendered in protecting the public from fraudulent agents and nurserymen. ”

“ It is quite obvious that these two classes of insects cannot be controlled or destroyed in the same way. Those which eat solid particles of food may, in most cases, be destroyed by applying some poisonous substance, such as arsenate of lead or Paris green, to the food which they eat. But those which obtain their food by sucking cannot be killed in this way. They can be destroyed, however, by spraying over their bodies some substance, such as kerosene emulsion, which will penetrate their bodies and so kill them. ”

“ But in growing a crop in the orchard, bear in mind that the trees [Pg 110] need, and are benefited by, cultivation, and that fertilizer will make them grow.
But, as already noted, humus is needed, and since this is the case, corn or cotton or clean-culture crops, which leave little behind them to make humus after they are removed, should not be grown every year. Some of the legumes should be brought in. Cowpeas, soja beans, beggarweed, velvet beans, alfalfa and melilotus can all be grown in the pecan area. ”

“ Of the domestic sources of potash, woodashes are important.
The amount of fertilizer which it is best to apply is difficult to decide upon; much depends on the character of the soil, what crops are cultivated and whether a crop of legumes is grown or not.
If legumes are grown for the benefit of the orchard, they should be fertilized, and if the crop is turned back into the soil, this may be sufficient for the trees, particularly [Pg 114] while they are young. ”

“ The nuts have little pomological value, as grown on the original tree some years, the kernel being shriveled and not filling more than one-third of the space within the shell; yet nuts from the crop of 1893 have been received at the Division of Pomology which were well filled with a kernel of very pleasant flavor. Possibly it may become more uniform in maturing fruit in Mississippi or Texas, where the season is longer than in Indiana. It is well worth a trial by experimenters in those States. ”

“ The preparation of the soil should be complete and thorough. It may be stated, as an axiomatic truth, that the soil cannot be prepared for trees as well after they are planted as it can before, and nothing is to be gained by planting the trees in poorly prepared land. Better by all means to spend a year or more in getting the land in shape.
If the land is covered with a growth of timber, this should be cleared away and the ground cultivated for a year at least before the trees are set. Corn is probably the best crop to grow on new land, and at the last working cowpeas should be sowed. ”

“ The buds are eaten out and destroyed by this insect at the time they start into growth. In certain sections spring working of pecans has been abandoned entirely owing to the destruction wrought by this pest. But notwithstanding all the drawbacks, pecan trees can be, should be and are propagated in large numbers by budding and grafting, and the seedling is becoming more and more a thing of the past. ”

“ The number of varieties in the commercial orchard should not be large. No greater mistake can be made than that of planting a few trees each of a large number of different varieties. Four or five, at most, are sufficient; got fewer varieties, rather than more.
Trees can be purchased in two ways: They can be secured direct from the nurserymen (usually by catalogue) , or they can be purchased from agents. By far most of the pecan trees are bought from the nursery, and by many this method is preferred. ”

“ The presence of pecan trees, single specimens perhaps, or two or three, in yards or about buildings here and there throughout a region, may be taken as a guide in the matter of planting, and no better can be had. Nothing will take the place of a practical demonstration in the way of a vigorous fruiting tree. ”

“ Nuts from rapid-growing, vigorous, healthy trees only should be used. It is best to plant in spring only nuts which matured the previous autumn. Preferably these nuts should be of fair or medium size for the variety to give the young seedling a fair start in life.
As already pointed out in regard to pecan shade trees [Pg 69] for more northerly regions, so in the case of pecan nuts for use in raising stocks in northern sections. It is best to secure nuts from trees near the northern limits of nut production.
Storing and Planting Seed Nuts. ”

“ The roots of young trees do not extend to any great distance away from the trunk. In distributing the fertilizer this fact should be remembered. A safe rule for all small-sized trees is to commence just outside an imaginary circle of two feet radius and apply the fertilizer in a circular band extending out some distance beyond the spread of the branches. Old trees, or those having a considerable spread of top, when planted in orchard form, should be fertilized by broadcasting the fertilizer over the ground. ”

“ The earth should be packed about the roots by hand, the tree being set no deeper than it stood in the nursery.
To start the trees off well, one pound to one pound and a half of a good fertilizer, analyzing about six per cent. potash, five per cent. phosphoric acid and four per cent. nitrogen, should be thoroughly mixed with the earth that is used in filling in the hole. Preferably, only surface soil should be used to place about the roots. ”

“ Men should climb the trees and collect the nuts in sacks. Men provided with sacks can, with the help of a good extension ladder, reach the most of the nuts on ordinary trees, up to forty or fifty feet in height. A good man will pick one hundred pounds of the shelled nuts in a day, at a cost of one dollar—or one cent per pound.
Fig. 35.
After the Harvest.
In gathering the crop, the product of each individual tree, in the case of heavy-bearing seedlings, or of each [Pg 124] group of trees of a single variety of grafted trees, should be kept in a single pile or lot. ”

“ Pecan nuts are used in a variety of ways. Not so very long since they were used almost entirely for dessert purposes, now they are largely used in making pastries and confections of different kinds. Based on these uses, new industries for supplying the kernels have been developed. The kernels are now put on the market in glass jars of different kinds and sizes, usually retailing at from 50 cents to 75 cents per pound. This is perhaps the most convenient form in which to buy them, but unfortunately, they are too frequently old and rancid. ”

“ For all fungous diseases of the pecan which may be controlled by spraying no substance will give better results than Bordeaux mixture, and directions for preparing it are given at the end of this chapter. Paris green, at the rate of four ounces to each fifty gallons of liquid, may be added to the mixture for the destruction of biting insects. For effectual work in spraying large trees, a platform should be erected on the wagon-bed to make it possible to reach the tops with the spray. ”

“ In addition to setting out an orchard of what he believes to be the best varieties for his section, or which experience has taught to be the best, the grower should, if he is thoroughly interested in his work, plant a tree or two of a number of other different kinds to test their merits and to learn something of their characteristics. ”