Growing Nuts in the North. Carl Weschcke
large part of the scionwood of English walnuts I had imported from the Carpathian mountains of Poland was grafted on them. The success of my grafting in this instance was only about 1–½%, showing that something was decidedly wrong. Two conclusions were possible: Either the scionwood had been injured by transportation and the severe winter temperatures during January and February of 1937 during which they were stored, or incompatibility existed between the imported walnuts and our local ones. My conclusion now is that when these stocks are fifteen years old or more and are thrifty, they will support grafting of the Carpathian English walnuts much more successfully than they will in their first decade of growth. Results have shown that these local stocks will accept such grafts, however, and that crops of English walnuts will be produced. The fertility of the soil must be maintained carefully, since the English walnut top tends to overgrow its black walnut root-stock, and unless nutritional substance for the support of these tops is fed to the root-system, meager crops, if any, will result.
I might note in comparison to the 1–½% success I had in this grafting, that during the same season I put several hundred scions of these same English walnuts on the Eastern black walnut stocks without a single successful graft occurring.
In 1933 and 1934, many of these experimentally grafted walnuts, such as Vandersloot, Paterson, and Rohwer as well as others, were planted in orchard formation. In digging these trees, we took care to get all of the root possible and to take a ball of dirt with the root. In spite of these precautions, some of the trees died, not having sufficient vitality and root development to withstand transplantation. This was a result not only of the crowded condition under which the stocks had grown but also of the poor soil which had nourished them. The soil was heavy blue clay underlaid with limestone within two feet of the top of the ground. Enough trees were set out in orchard formation which are growing well and bearing annual crops, to give us the proof we need in drawing conclusions of superiority among these varieties.
Black walnuts will keep for several years if they are properly dried and then stored in a cool, but not too damp, place. Storing nuts in attics which are likely to become excessively hot in the summer time, causes rancidity sooner than any other method. Nuts keep very well in attics during the winter but they should be transferred to a basement during hot weather. If the basement is very damp, though, nuts will mould there. For general storage, without having to move them from one place to another for different seasons, nuts can be kept most practically in a barn or outside shed. The only precaution necessary under such circumstances is that they should be in a box or steel barrel to prevent squirrels and mice from feeding on them, since barns and sheds are easily accessible to these animals.
The kernels of black walnuts need not be discolored if the hulls of the fresh nuts are removed as soon as the nuts are ripe. At my farm, we have done this with an ordinary corn-sheller. The nuts, having been hulled this way, are then soaked in water for a few hours to remove any excess coloring matter left on their shells, after which they are dried for several days out-of-doors, although not exposed to the sun since this might cause them to crack open. Thorough drying is necessary before sacking to prevent moulding. Kernels extracted from nuts treated this way are very light in color like English walnuts. This enhances their market value and they command a higher price when they are to be used for culinary purposes such as cake frosting and candies where there is exposure of large pieces or halves of the nut kernel. I find black walnuts are exceptionally delicious when used in a candy called divinity fudge. The strong flavor of the black walnut kernel although appreciated by many people, is not as popular as that of the butternut, of which more is said in another chapter.
The food value of black walnut kernels is high since they are composed of concentrated fat and protein, similar to the English walnut, the hickory nut and the pecan. There is also the advantage, which John Harvey Kellogg of Battle Creek, Michigan, has pointed out, that nuts are a food of high purity being entirely free from disease bacteria. One could safely say of unshelled nuts that there is not a disease germ in a carload.
There was a time when black walnut hulls were purchased by producers of insecticides. The black walnut hull, when dried and pulverized, produces a substance which gives body to the concentrated pyrethrum extract which is the essential ingredient of many insecticides.
One cannot leave a discussion of black walnuts without reflecting on the furniture which has been possible only through the use of vast forests of black walnut timber. Beautiful veneers have come from the burl walnut, being formed by protuberances on the trunks of the trees near the surface of the ground. There is a variety of black walnut which we have been experimenting with for quite a few years, called the Lamb, which has a beautifully figured grain. As this appears only in mature timber, ours is not yet old enough to show it.
I have found that the Ohio black walnut is prone to hybridize with butternut trees in its vicinity and others have told me of its hybridizing with English walnut trees near it, which shows it to be almost as vacillating in character as our Japanese walnuts or heartnuts. Ohio black walnuts, when planted, usually produce vigorous stocks, many of which show hybridity of some sort. If one examines the nuts of the Ohio and finds them dwarfed or deformed, he may be sure that they have been pollinized by something other than a black walnut. Planting such nuts, then, will grow hybrid trees. Most of us have enough curiosity to want to try this as an experiment.
Thomas walnut seedlings have produced more thrifty trees than Ohio nuts have. However, the best understocks are those produced from seeds of native grown trees. It is well understood that rarely does a specific type such as the Ohio, Thomas or Stabler reproduce itself exactly from seeds. In raising black walnut seedlings, my experience has taught me that the nuts should be planted in the fall and not too deep, one to two inches below the surface being all the depth necessary. They may never sprout if they are four to six inches under ground. The black walnut tree is a glutton for food seemingly, it will use all the fertilizer that it is given although, no doubt, there is a practical limit. It must have plenty of food to produce successive crops of nuts, and barnyard manure is the safest and most practical kind to use. This can be put on as a heavy mulch around the trees but some of it should also be spaded into the ground. One must always remember that the feeding roots of a tree are at about the same circumference as the tips of the branches so that fertilizer put close to the trunk will do little good except in very young trees. Since 1936 we have been watching a small native walnut which came into bearing while in a nursery row. This tree bore such fine thin-shelled easy-to-crack nuts and lent itself so readily to being propagated by graftage and had so many other good characteristics that we have selected it as representative of the black walnut varieties for the north and have named it the Weschcke walnut and patented the variety. A list is here appended to show the order of hardiness and value based on our experience:
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