Growing Nuts in the North

h parallel, but although it is farther north, it is as favorable for the growth of nut trees as New Ulm or St. Peter, because it lies in the Mississippi River valley and is fart

estnuts thrive best in a slightly acid, well-drained soil; hazels will grow in either alkaline or acid soil as will black walnuts and butternuts; almonds need a light sandy soil, similar to that suitable to plums, pecans do well in either rich river bottoms, whi

were not slightly rancid. Because I liked eating these nuts, I thought I would try to grow some for my own consumption and so avoid having to depend on a grocer's occasional supply of those shipped in, al

s, hazel bushes, and a wild hickory called "bitternut." This last is well-named for I have never found an animal other than a squirrel that could endure its nuts. Possibly the white-footed mouse or deer-mouse could-I don't know. He usually eats anything a squirrel does. I learned to appreciate these bitternut trees later and they becam

and I bought twenty-eight large, seedling black walnut trees. I was too eager to get ahead with my plans and I attempted, the first year these trees were planted, to graft all of them. My ability to do this was not equal to my ambition though, and all but two of the trees were killed. I was successful in grafting one of them to a Stabler black

I decided it would be quite plausible to grow pecans and English walnuts at this latitude. So I neglected my native trees that year for the sake of more exotic ones. One year sufficed; the death of my whole planting o

ecial instructions on how to prepare them against winter. I have always felt that what he told me was indeed special and very valuable since those three trees lived. Subsequently, I bought several hundred dollars worth of trees from him. More than that, we became friends. I visited him at his nurseries in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and he again demonstrated

e bed which contained two bushels of nuts and reburied them in haphazard places around the farm. When the nuts started to sprout, they came up in the fields, in the gardens, and on the lawn-everywhere except where I had intended them to be. I later was grateful to those squirrels, though, because, through their redistributing

s less bold, for although they carried off at least a bushel of walnuts, about two thousand seedlings grew. I had planted these too close together and as the

hickory seedlings was unsuccessful. I planted a quart of these nuts and not one plant came up. No doubt the

undred of them. I planted these trees in a heavy clay soil with limestone running near the surface. They grew well the first year, except that there was heavy mortality during col

ney locusts. I planted five hundred Douglas fir but unfortunately, I put these deep in the woods among heavy timber where they were so shaded that only a few lived. Later, I moved

ng. In the latter one tears off the sod in favorable places and throws seed on the unprotected ground. In doing this, I ignored the natural requirements of forest practice which call for half-shade during the

in such necessary equipment as frames and lath screening. Better equipped with both infor

te Pine -P

ne -Pinus

-Pinus pu

e -Pinus

in northern

one -Pin

in northern

stone -P

in northern

-Pinus

in northern

Pinus Jeffr

nus banksiana

ne -Pinus

y, a fine

of seed. Each tree varied in the quality and size of its seeds. Although it might be possible to graft the best varieties on young seedling stocks, in all the hundreds of grafts I have made on pine, I have bee

sides these, I planted balsam fir, red cedar, Juniperus Virginiana, and white cedar, A

which are found in clusters of five, are slender, 1-1/2 to 3 inches long, and are dark green. They are shed during the fifth or sixth year. The buds of the tree are found bunched at the branch tips and are scaly and pointed. The limber pine has flowers like those of the white pine, except that they are rose-colored. Although the fruit is described as annual, I have found that, in this locality, it

arieties of apple, plum and cherry. Doing so also served to economize on ground, since ultimately nut trees require

us nut seeds

m plenty of room, with no forest trees around to cut off their supply of sunlight and air. I learned that it is impractical to graft a large forest tree of butternut or hickory. Incidental to that, I learned that a branch of a butternut tree which looks large enough to support a man's weight near the trunk, will not do so when the branch is green and alive, but that a dead branch

art of a nursery filled with hardy trees which can endure the climate of the north. In looking back, I appreciate how fortunate I was in having sought and received advice from experienced nurserymen. Had I not done so, frequent failures would