ld in Lancaster some seven years ago.
It is not that the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station lacks
interest in nut culture that keeps it from doing work along nut
investigational lines, but because the older and more extensive apple,
peach, cherry, grape and berry industries have called upon the
resources of the station to its working capacity.

When Mr. Hershey wrote asking me to speak before this meeting I felt
that the only information we had at the station that would fit into the
picture was the information we have regarding orchard fertility. I
therefore gave him the subject, "Is the information we now have on
general orchard fertility of value in the nut grove?"

First, let me touch upon some of the papers given this morning. I think
it would be well for the nut meat industry to look into the department
of health's requirements governing the health inspection of workers
handling food products. I also suggest looking into the possibility of
the selling of nuts and nut meats by interested high school boys and
girls in our many towns and cities.

The question of annual bearing of nut trees is a subject needing
investigation. I rather expect we shall find that this factor is closely
connected with over-production of a tree one year, fertility and
moisture supply, or, in other words, the nuts may be much like apples.
While the nature of tree growth may tend to cause trees to be alternate
producers, man may upset this natural habit to some extent by proper
cultural practices and thus cause the tree to produce, not a full crop
in the off year but at least some fruits that will be on the profit
side.

As to the toxic effect of some of our nut trees upon growth of other
plants growing near by, I rather expect we shall find as time goes on
that instead of the trees having a toxic effect they have a robbing
effect upon soil moisture and food. One thing that leads me to this
belief is that years ago we taught that one reason for seeding a cover
crop in the orchard was to have the cover take the moisture from the
soil in the fall of the year and in that way check tree growth. We now
know that a mature apple or peach tree will reverse this during the
growing season and will take its full share of moisture and food from
the soil and really take these away from the cover crop. We saw this
occur during the dry years of 1929 and 1930 with covers that had been
seeded in June. During both these years, in our orchard bloc