n almost all growth factors up to 70 years of
age and then they were about the same.

Of the cultural practices, the most important is probably pruning.
Sawing off the limbs growing on the trunk makes all wood produced
thereafter free of knots. When the trees reach about six inches in
diameter, one should select those he is going to call "crop
trees"--about 200 of these per acre--and spend his time getting them to
timber size and quality. The other trees are removed over a period of
several years, so that you finally have only the 200 high quality crop
trees left. The reason I suggest starting the pruning when the trees are
six inches in diameter, is that that is the size of the veneer core
left after the veneer manufacturer has turned the log for the thin sheet
of furniture veneer. Remove the limbs and improve the quality so you get
a 16-foot log free of limbs and knots. That is what the buyer is looking
for.

I know practically nothing about growing trees for a nut crop, but we
seem to have something in common in growing trees both for nuts and
timber. Just a lot of it is "horse sense", with a few rules of thumb
based upon scientific principles. You must give the crop trees space,
give them plenty of room to grow. In the woods they start to grow in a
dense undergrowth. The young trees soon reach a height where they begin
to dominate their neighbors. There you pick the straight,
thrifty-growing trees for crop trees and favor them in your thinning and
pruning operations. Tree density influences diameter growth of the
trees. In thick stands, trees are usually small and spindly. So plant a
large number to give the crop trees good form, then thin the plantation
carefully to make it grow.

Grazing and fire are very harmful to tree plantations. Most of the
plantations we studied were grazed. A good many were burned. I don't
think nut growers would periodically burn their stands to improve the
nut production. It is the same with growing a crop of wood. Once the
livestock begin to trample or compact the soil, tree growth slows down
and when that happens it makes the tree more susceptible to attack by
insects and fungi.

As to marketing trees, let's assume you have some material you want to
sell. The one thing you want to know is, "how much is it worth?" That is
like me asking you what my house is worth. I understand there are
persons here not only from Illinois and Iowa, but from New York, West
Virginia, Ohio, and Kentuck