cover for protection. This worried me a great
deal and I decided there must be a deficiency. Soil tests repeatedly
showed a lack of phosphate.

I applied ground rock phosphate to my larger bearing English walnut
trees and there has not been the least sign of winter injury since.

Many of my smaller nut trees have been bearing earlier for me since I
have been using the phosphate. Customers who come here often remark at
the way some of my little grafted trees are bearing crops and I tell
them that I believe in keeping plenty of phosphate in the soil for root
growth and nut production.

I am writing this brief article thinking that it might help solve the
problems of other nut growers who have repeatedly been having trouble
with winter-killing of their Carpathian, or English walnut trees.
Phosphate seems to prevent a late sappy-condition from causing winter
injury.

I prefer to apply the phosphate and nitrogen early in April or early
May. Fall applications of any kind of fertilizer are apt to cause winter
injury. I usually scatter the rock phosphate around the trees using
about four handfuls around a first year tree. Then I turn over the sod
bottom with a shovel, which puts the phosphate down where the roots can
get it. I use the phosphate around all the young trees we set out and
seldom lose a tree as the phosphate encourages the starting of new
feeder roots on the nut trees.

A Report From Southern Minnesota

R. E. HODGSON, _University of Minnesota, Southern School and Experiment
Station, Waseca, Minn._

We have 20 odd Carpathian walnut trees growing from nuts planted about
1931. So far, I have never seen a flower on any of them. They grow up 6
or 8 feet in a year and that seems to be their difficulty. They do not
stop growing in time to harden off before cold weather comes. I think a
lot of the winter killing is also due to sun scald which would indicate
an inability to retain dormancy during a January thaw. Some of the trees
have lived through two winters with only minor damage and then when the
right conditions come along, they are killed to the ground. Wrapping the
trunks with aluminum foil has not solved the problem. I have purchased
one or two grafted trees which were recommended as more hardy but so far
they have had the same experience as the one I grew from nuts.

Black walnut and hickory do well here and I have a hiccan perhaps 20
feet tall but it has never borne any nuts. Chinese chestnuts ar