hes, to produce income while the
pecans were reaching bearing age.

I give you this background so that you may better understand my attitude
toward chestnut growing. The scale on which I have set out on chestnut
growing I know to some of you will seem rather bold or foolhardy.

About ten years ago I found that the U. S. D. A. Pecan Experiment
Station at Albany, Georgia had a small chestnut orchard. Max Hardy, was
doing the chestnut work and was so much interested in them that I caught
fire and have been burning ever since. When I found that the harvest
came between the peach harvest and the pecan harvest it fitted right
into my kind of farming. The fact, that it was a possible tree crop made
chestnut growing still more attractive to me. Max suggested that I join
the N. N. G. A. when I complained that I couldn't find much information
on chestnuts. I attended my first convention at Norris. I have tried to
make most of them since that time. Of all the discussions at the Norris
meeting, the one that stuck in my mind was whether nurseries should
recommend seedlings or grafted trees. I thought then, and still think,
that for commercial production one must have varieties, because
seedlings are so variable. I believe, that when, chestnut growing comes
of age, the major part of the production will go through processing
plants. It will be a great advantage to have nuts of uniform quality and
size, which is and will be impossible with seedlings.

Of the fifteen trees that I planted in 1946, only one fruited in 1951.
It bore only 3-1/4 pounds of nuts. The other fourteen did not fruit.
This year there are a few scattering burs at seven years of age, on
those that I did not graft this spring. I am now too old to wait seven
or eight years for a chestnut tree to begin bearing. These trees came
from a Virginia nursery. The trees I planted in 1947, I started grafting
in 1950, to Nanking, Meiling, and Kuling, and finished this spring,
except for a few replants. I also grafted ten trees in 1950 to
Abundance. These tops bore the second year, several bearing good burs
the same year the scions were set. These grafted trees are anxious to go
to work, because they bloom in the spring and again in late July and
early August. I have used the in-lay bark, modified cleft, the cleft,
and what I call a saddle graft, bevelling two sides of the stock and
splitting the scion, thus slipping the split scion down over the
prepared stock. I have had equal