“ We have an organization, The Northern Nut Growers Association. It did not grow from the earth, there is knowledge of science here, there are doctors' degrees (I wish I had one) , there is ambition, honesty, love, pride, and patriotism. Man's knowledge is the key. What he leaves alone or what he destroys. So the greatest value is man's knowledge. After all, the greatest values are the things that come from the minds and the hearts of men. ”

“ I make my living tilling the soil and dabble in my nut grove only when I can find a few moments to spare—in fact all I know about nuts and nut-grafting, I owe to my good friend, Edgar Huen. I shall always remember that balmy May morning 25 years ago when Mr. Huen came over with a kit full of hickory scions, and suggested we go out in my pasture and do some grafting. In that bag were Stratford, Rockville, Des Moines, Marquette, Hagen and Monahan.
We grafted all that day—that is Mr. Huen did the grafting and I watched him. Today these trees are living monuments of our work. ”

“ MR. MCDANIEL: Do you have any indication that you get a better quality nut from one county or one area than you do from another?
MR. MANGELSDORF: That is a question that I can't answer, because I am in the research and development end of the business, and have very little to do with the purchasing and marketing of the nuts themselves.
MR. LEMKE: What do you do when you strike a day that is very humid and the nuts start getting moldy?
MR. MANGELSDORF: That is a bugaboo. I always say you don't have to be nuts to be in the nut business, but it sure helps a little bit. ”

“ The black walnut, Juglans nigra is probably—some of us think, at least—constituted genetically in such a way that the varieties we have do not yield annual crops simply because they are not constituted that way. I know some of you may disagree with me, but one of the greatest arguments for this idea is the fact that in some of our other nut species we do have varieties that are genetically heavy producers. For instance, we have a selection of Chinese chestnuts right now that will bear annual crops on the poorest soil under any conditions imaginable. ”

“ That is one of Nature's ways to perpetuate itself. But I think there a constructive angle in those trees that respond to nitrogenous fertilizer or manure. I believe the secret, if there is a secret, is that a tree in bearing a crop exhausts itself more or less. It recuperates the following year and then is ready to bear another crop. And the way to meet that situation is to fertilize heavily, especially with nitrogen, the season of the heavy crop so that you will have not only enough leaf growth to produce that crop, but to build up nutrients the following year. ”

“ Time has proven Grandfather right and Grandmother wrong. Spanish peanuts is a huge industry; most of our hybrid corns, which have added millions of bushels to our yields are yellow.
My father wasted his time back at the turn of the century planting a peach orchard on his best cotton land. He planted pecans each winter, beginning about 1912, often to the ribbing of friends who still worshipped at the feet of King Cotton. One told him that he had a pecan tree or two about his home and the damn flying squirrels ate all of the nuts. ”

“ I have a hollow white oak on my farm I let stand because a family of squirrels is raised in it every year. I also have a bee tree and the bees help pollinate my fruit trees so they produce better. A world without trees would be a desolate place. The value of a park is in its trees.
I have spoken of the value of trees for the preservation of wild life, but how do trees affect the life of man and how does man affect tree life? Man is the builder or destroyer of tree life; although the tree is the oldest living thing in plant or animal life, man is master over trees. ”

“ If we take nature's way, watch a squirrel plant a hickory or black walnut. He will bury it about an inch deep, and it will stay moist all winter long, the same as if it were stratified. But if you take a nut and store in a hot place you are going to slow up or kill that germ. ”

“ All the nuts that I have ever had any dealing with seem to be very susceptible to mold growth. If the moisture content of the nuts is above a critical level, mold growth takes place in the shell at a very fast rate. The only thing we can do in a case like that is to get the kernels in to St. Louis and destroy the mold growth or spores on the surface before it can grow so that the fungous mycelium is visible to the eye. The black walnut and pecan, if you examine them under the microscope, all seem to have mold growth on the surface of the kernels. ”

“ In the kinds of pine, the Virginia pine is one of the best, and also, one of the youngest to produce seed cones. I have counted twenty-five cones on a five year old Virginia Pine tree. In forestry, the red cedar is good to re-seed itself in the area in which it grows. The maple ash, cotton wood, and poplar also grow freely from nature's seeding.
Every tree that grows has a value. The leaves help purify the air; the persimmon and the tree with a wild grapevine are food for wild life. The old hollow tree is a refuge for the coon and o'possum and other wild life. ”

“ If you sign anything a company gives you, you are liable to have anything cut on your land. Remember the saying that "the big print gives it to you and the fine print takes it away." And it's the fine print you want to watch in all your right of ways or in your condemnation proceedings.
I know a man who had almost 160 acres of river-bottom hickories. During his lifetime he was very careful about those trees. He would cut the brush around the trees and harvest those hickory nuts as if it was a crop of corn or beans. ”

“ I have at Ithaca a number of trees of various kinds of nuts, and I think that the enjoyment I get out of the hickories, which we grow, is as great or greater than that from the black walnuts. The Davis hickory is one of the best that matures, the Wilcox—that's an Ohio nut—probably has a bushel and a half of nuts in the shuck this year, and the Kentucky will give a pretty good record. Of about 20 varieties, those are the only ones which amount to anything, and we have a fairly good selection. ”

“ If they call you contrary, that you won't give in to anything, let them call you contrary, let them call you nuts, but you can protect your trees and make sure that their future is secure.
What will happen to your trees after you are dead? Each individual's situation has to be considered separately. In many states you can provide by will to whom you want your nut planting to go, or you can, by making a trust, give the trees to trustees with certain powers and duties to care for and manage them for a period of time or perpetually, depending on the laws of your state. ”

“ There comes a point, however, when information thus gained needs to be checked under the specific conditions where the crops are grown and very little research has been done in the northern states where the hardy nuts are important.
Of special importance to the northern nut growers is the control of diseases and insects. At the present time the bunch disease of walnuts is becoming increasingly more troublesome and very little is known as to how this is spread or how it may be controlled. In my own filbert planting, the hazel bud mite during past years has made the crop practically a failure. ”

“ In the native hickory and black walnut, there is a great need for more interest in searching for and preserving the most valuable trees for their cracking quality, flavor, and productivity. There have been and are now, nut trees on farms that were valuable trees, but were known only to the owner and the small boys of the community. These trees should have been preserved for posterity, but many of them are lost forever.
In forestry, a tree's value may be in its ability to re-seed itself. ”

“ Good growing conditions are desirable for wood growth and fruit bud formation and any retarding of growth the previous season means little or no production. Winter injury to wood and bud, diseases or insects attacking the foliage, soil moisture, and summer temperatures will lower tree vitality. There are times when strong vigorous trees fail to fruit which could be due to a high or low carbohydrate-nitrogen balance. Soil type, plant food, age of tree, and location will have some influence on annual or even biennial production but yet are not the all important reasons for light crops. ”

“ Research with northern nut trees is exceedingly important from the standpoint of accomplishing the objectives of the Association. The matter of breeding new varieties has already been touched on. Other types of research are such that a large part must be carried on by experiment stations which have a continuing program. Much has been done in securing observational information by Association members themselves but some problems are such that they must be continued over a long period of time and set up with adequate checks and provision for securing significant data. ”