Growing Nuts in the North. Carl Weschcke
give variety to the landscape at my farm, I planted several other kinds of trees. Among these were Kentucky coffee-trees which have beautiful bronze foliage in the spring and honey 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 the surviving fir trees into an open field where they still flourish. About two hundred fifty pines of mixed varieties—white, Norway and jack—that I planted in the woods, also died.
I decided, then, that evergreens might do better if they were planted from seeds. I followed instructions in James W. Toumey's "Seeding and Planting in the Practice of Forestry," in bed culture and spot seeding. 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 first two to three years of growth. Thousands of seedlings sprouted but they all died either from disease or from attacks by cows and sheep. One should never attempt to raise trees and stock in the same field.
Because of these misfortunes, I determined to study the growth of evergreens. I invested in such necessary equipment as frames and lath screening. Better equipped with both information and material, I grew thousands of evergreen trees. Among the varieties of pine were:
| native White Pine | —Pinus strobus |
| Norway pine | —Pinus silvestrus |
| Mugho pine | —Pinus pumila montana |
| sugar pine | —Pinus Lambertiana (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) |
| Swiss stone | —Pinus cembra (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) |
| Italian stone | —Pinus pinea (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) |
| pinon | —Pinus edulis (not hardy in northern Wisconsin) |
| bull pine | —Pinus Jeffreyi (hardy) |
| jack pine | —Pinus banksiana (very hardy) |
| limber pine | —Pinus flexilis (semi-hardy, a fine nut pine). |
Many of the limber pines came into bearing about fifteen years after the seed was planted. At that age they varied in height from three to fifteen feet. One little three-foot tree had several large cones full 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 been successful only once. I doubt that such a thing would ever be practical from a commercial standpoint unless some new method were discovered by which a larger percentage of successful grafts could be realized.
I cultivated the Douglas fir, white, Norway, and Colorado blue varieties of spruce. Besides these, I planted balsam fir, red cedar, Juniperus Virginiana, and white cedar, Arborvitae. Practically all of these trees are still growing and many of them bear seed.
I wish to describe the limber pine, Pinus flexilis, for it is not only a good grower and quite hardy but it is also a very ornamental nut pine which grows to be a broad, stout-trunked tree 40 to 75 feet high. The young bark is pale grey or silver; the old bark is very dark, in square plates. The wood itself is light, soft and close-grained, having a color that varies from yellow to red. The needles, which are found in clusters of five, are slender, 1–½ 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 takes about fifteen months from the time the blossoms appear for it to reach maturity. That is, the fruit requires two seasons for growth, maturing its seeds the second September. The cones of the limber pine, which vary from three to seven inches in length, are purple, having thick rounded scales and being abruptly peaked at the apex. The seeds are wingless or have only very narrow wings around them.
With the idea of getting practical results sooner, since nut trees mature slowly, I interplanted my nut trees with varieties of apple, plum and cherry. Doing so also served to economize on ground, since ultimately nut trees require a great deal of space for best growth. Walnut trees, for example, should be set 40 to 60 feet apart in each direction.
Pinus Flexilus nut seeds, Natural Size
I learned a variety of facts during these first years of trial and error. I discovered, for instance, that iron fence posts rust away in an acid soil; that one must use cedar or oak. Conversely, in alkaline soil, iron will last indefinitely, but that the nitrogenous bacteria will quickly rot wooden posts. I found that the secret of growing hickories successfully lies in giving them 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 of similar size will. Contrariwise, even a small green limb of a bitternut-hickory will bear my weight, but an old limb, though several inches thick, becomes so brittle after it is dead for several years that it will break under slight pressure. Fortunately, falls from trees do not usually result in serious injuries but I did acquire quite a few bruises learning these distinctions.
There is always a natural mortality in planting trees, but in those first years, lacking badly-needed experience, I lost more than 75%. Nearly all of them started to grow but died during the first few winters. Those which survived were the start 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 surely have discouraged me. As it was, the successes I did have were an incentive which made me persist and which left me with faith enough in an ultimate success to go on buying seeds and trees and to make greater and more varied experiments.
Chapter 3
BLACK WALNUTS
I have spent more of my time cultivating black walnuts than any other kind of nut tree and given more of my ground area over to them. Yet it was with no great amount of enthusiasm that I started working with these trees. Obviously there could be nothing new or extraordinary resulting from my planting trees of this species either on my farm or at my St. Paul home, since there already were mature, bearing black walnut trees at both places. It was only with the idea that they would be an attractive addition to the native butternut groves that I decided to plant some black walnut seedlings.
This did not prove feasible as I first attempted it. I had engaged a Mr. Miller at St. Peter to procure wild black walnut trees for me since they grew near that town. He was to dig these trees with as much of the root system included as possible and ship them to my farm. But the winter season came before this had been accomplished and both Mr. Miller and I, deciding the idea was not as practical as we had hoped it would be, abandoned it. Later that same autumn I found that a nursery just outside of St. Paul had several rows of overgrown black walnut trees