At last, terminating my
concern and distress over the condition in which the trees and scions
would be after such great delays and so many repackings, the shipment
arrived in St. Paul. There remained only the requirement of getting
permission from the Bureau of Plant Inspection of the State of Minnesota
to take it to Wisconsin, where, if there was anything left, I intended
to plant it. This permission being readily granted, we managed, by truck
and, finally, by sled, to get it to the nursery about the middle of the
winter.
The following spring, we planted the nuts and trees and grafted the
scions on black walnut and butternut stocks. The mortality of these
grafts was the greatest I have ever known. Of about four thousand
English walnut grafts, representing some twenty varieties, only one
hundred twenty-five took well enough to produce a good union with the
stock and to grow. Some of them grew too fast and in spite of my
precautions, were blown out; others died from winter injury the first
year. By the following spring, there were only ten varieties which had
withstood the rigor of the climate. Of the five hundred trees, only a
few dozen survived. Fortunately, this was not one of our severe, "test"
winters, or probably none of these plants would have withstood it.
Pages:
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117