on trees that are on
unusually fertile soil.

My conclusion is that the pecan is a very active feeder, and what it
needs is about three times as much fertilizer as is required for any
ordinary crop.

It is time somebody better placed than I am made a systematic experiment
as follows:

1. Feed pecan trees at least five times as much plant food as the
nuts and leaves use.

2. Injure the trees by hacking the bark to make them bear, and see
how much they can be made to produce by this means.

A Busseron tree in the town of Round Hill stands in a backyard of a
friend of mine and they use it, I think, to tie clotheslines to and
maybe the boys have had a little fun driving nails into it and it bears
every year.[7]

The real find of my observations is a pecan known as All State, which
has been wonderfully advertised by one of your fellows.[8] On a catalog
it produces a nut two inches long--wonderful. On Mr. Henry Taylor's tree
in Hamilton, Virginia, it produces a tiny, symmetrical, pointed nut too
small to be contemptible, except for squirrel feed. They might have time
to handle the crop.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: In the NNGA Report for 1935, Mr. C. A. Reed told of studies
of blossoming habits of pecan varieties at Rockport, Indiana, conducted
for four seasons in co-operation with Mr. J. F. Wilkinson. There the
Busseron was found to be a protandrous variety, shedding most of its
pollen, and in some years all of it, before the period of receptivity of
its pistillate flowers. "With Butterick ... the order was reversed, as
the period of receptivity began first," and it was classified,
therefore, as regularly protogynous. "... Furthermore, upon close
observation it has been found," he said, that trees of the Butterick
variety "develop very few pistillate flowers, and that many of these
wither up and drop off, apparently because of inherent weakness. From
this, it would appear that light bearing is not necessarily due to lack
of suitable or adequate pollen." The Butterick had a record of
practically non-bearing performances during the four years (1931, 1932,
1934 and 1935) at Rockport, which is duplicated by its performance
records at other locations and other years, so it is generally on the
discard list. But when it does bear and mature its nuts it is a good
pecan. Mr. P. W. Wang rated it his first choice of northern pecans
fruited in China.

Mr. Reed listed as protandrous Busseron, Kentucky, Majo