was taken from the orchard, treated to kill the
weevil and put in the ground in the fall.
Now, you can't get away with that everywhere. Our orchard is far enough
away from the nursery that we don't have any rodent damage. We have had
some trouble from skunks, and they finally find out that the nuts are in
there in a row where we have planted them, and they go right down and
get them. But we have no trouble from mice or rats. We are far away from
woodland and buildings.
We find that some people have trouble with wind or water erosion. We
don't have that. So we can get by and do a better job and produce better
trees by sowing nuts in the fall, and we sow them in the fall, just as
if we were sowing black walnuts for production and distribution over the
state.
By the next fall when we are ready to distribute those seedlings as 1-0
stock we find that we have produced seedlings of about 14 inches in
height as 1-0 stock. From what I have seen that isn't a bad size to
produce as 1-0 stock, though it is better in some places. We find, too,
in the spring before germination, that in our particular section of the
state along the Ohio River valley we sometimes get a dry spring and find
it necessary to irrigate that land where we planted the chestnuts, just
as the seed beds where we planted pine, in order to keep the ground
moist and keep it in a condition where seeds will germinate freely.
We weed our chestnuts just as we do every row planted in the nursery,
cultivate with the tractor about three times in a season, which is all
the time we have to give to it, and hand weed it once. Perhaps it ought
to have a little more than that. Some seasons I am sure it should, but
that's about the time we are allowed or the time that we can allot to
that.
I hope, Mr. Davidson, you will check me here on this time. I don't want
to get too far out and upset the schedule.
President Davidson: All right, if necessary.
Mr. Quick: In distributing, the seedlings or blight-resistant chestnut
seed in West Virginia we began back in 1943 putting them out in
quantity. We had to limit them, the only thing in the nursery we had to
limit the amount as to seed. That was because everybody in the state
became very much interested, and the Conservation Commission makes those
available to any land owner in the state free of charge if he will plant
them as a game food but not under other circumstances. He can't use them
for ornamentals, and he can't use
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