s from J. F. Jones, who had the largest and best known of
the nurseries handling northern nut trees. Some of these grafted trees
were also planted at my home in St. Paul, using the two locations as
checks against each other. The site in St. Paul eventually proved
unsatisfactory because of the gravelly soil and because the trees were
too crowded. The varieties of black walnuts I first experimented with
were the Thomas, Ohio, Stabler and Ten Eyck, which were planted by
hundreds year after year. If I had not worked on this large scale there
would be no reason for me to write about it today as the mortality of
these black walnuts was so high that probably none would have lived to
induce in me the ambition necessary to support a plan involving lengthy,
systematic experimentation. Some of these early trees survive today,
however, and although few in number, they have shown me that the
experiment was a worthy one since it laid the foundation for results
which came later. In fact, I feel that both the time and money I spent
during that initial era of learning were investments in which valuable
dividends of knowledge and development are still being paid.

In grafting black walnuts on butternut trees, I very foolishly attempted
to work over a tree more than a foot in diameter and I did not succeed
in getting a single graft to grow on it. Other younger trees, from three
to six inches in diameter, I successfully grafted. Some of these are
still living but clearly show the incompatibility of the two species
when black walnut is grafted on butternut. The opposite combination of
butternut on black walnut is very successful and produces nuts earlier
and in greater abundance than butternut does when grafted on its own
species.

The expense of buying trees by hundreds was so great that after a year I
decided that I could very easily plant black walnuts to obtain the young
trees needed as understocks. When they had grown large enough, I would
graft them over myself. I wrote to my friend in St. Peter, Mr. E. E.
Miller, and he told me where I could obtain walnuts by the bushel. Soon
I was making trips to the countryside around St. Peter buying walnuts
from the farmers there. I planted about five bushels of these at the
River Falls farm and the rest, another two bushels, at St. Paul. Soon I
had several thousand young walnut trees which all proved hardy to the
winters.

When pruning the black walnut trees purchased from Mr. Jones for
trans