Peter, I did locate some black
walnut trees only to find that it was impractical to dig and transport
trees of the size I wanted. A nursery near St. Paul supplied me with
some 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
walnut; the other tree persisted so in throwing out its natural sprouts
that I decided it should be allowed to continue doing so. That native
seedling tree which I could not graft now furnishes me with bushels of
walnuts each year which are planted for understocks. This is the name
given to the root systems on which good varieties are grafted.
In an effort to replace these lost trees, I inquired at the University
of Minnesota Farm and was given the addresses of several nurserymen who
were then selling grafted nut trees. Their catalogues were so inviting
that 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.
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