ne of that nature
for walnuts, but I wouldn't suggest getting around and beating the trees
up.

MR. MAGILL: In that connection, one man in Kentucky got the same answer.
He said about five years ago a cyclone came through there and blew the
chimney off the house and uprooted a number of apple trees and leaned
over three walnut trees, and he said they have borne five crops in
succession. Now, this is the same story that you have got there.

MR. STOKE: I'd just like to remark that I think that's a sort of
negative approach. I noticed a boy who had an apple tree that was about
to die. He girdled it and got a tremendous crop of blossom. You probably
have secured the same results. That is one of Nature's ways to
perpetuate itself. But I think there a constructive angle in those trees
that respond to nitrogenous fertilizer or manure. I believe the secret,
if there is a secret, is that a tree in bearing a crop exhausts itself
more or less. It recuperates the following year and then is ready to
bear another crop. And the way to meet that situation is to fertilize
heavily, especially with nitrogen, the season of the heavy crop so that
you will have not only enough leaf growth to produce that crop, but to
build up nutrients the following year. I believe that will help break
the cycle and establish more regularity.

Some trees do that themselves; that is, they will bear a moderate crop
every year. I have the Land walnut at home. It bears every year. Certain
chestnuts will bear every year, not excessive crops, but Hobson bears a
pretty good crop every year. I believe the secret of breaking that
on-and-off cycle is to fertilize heavily the year of production not the
year of non-production. If you apply nitrogen on the off year you
produce perhaps an excess of wood growth that year and overbearing the
following year.

MR. MAGILL: Referring to apples, any of you apple growers well know that
the Golden Delicious and York Imperial grow crops in alternate years.
Now, you come along with hormone sprays and take half or two-thirds of
the young fruits off soon after the trees blossom and throw them into
regular production. That's the same thing that you are talking about,
Mr. Stoke. I never heard of anybody thinning walnuts. I don't know
whether they do or not. A lot of things I don't know, but I don't know
of anybody ever thinning walnuts, except squirrels.

MR. WARD: Last year a lady from Kokomo, Indiana, wrote me that she had a
very