Growing Nuts in the North - A Personal Story of the Author's Experience of 33 Years - with Nut Culture in Minnesota and Wisconsin by Carl Weschcke
page 47 of 145 (32%)
page 47 of 145 (32%)
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Aveline, White Aveline, Purple Aveline, the Italian Red, Daviana and
several hybrids between other filberts and hazels. By 1945 the number of these plants were in the neighborhood of 2000 and by 1952 considerable knowledge had been gained as to the hardiness, blight resistance to the common hazel blight (known scientifically as cryptosporella anomala), freedom from the curculio of the hazelnuts (commonly known as the hazel weevil) and resistance to other insect pests. Also, considerable data had been accumulated by cataloging over 650 trees each year for five years; cataloging included varied and detailed studies of their growth, bearing habits, ability to resist blight, curculio and other insects, the size of the nut, the thinness of the shell and the flavor of the kernel. Several books of all this detail were accumulated in trying to nail down several commercial varieties that would be propagated from this vast amount of material. Although some bushes produced good nuts at the rate of as much as two tons to the acre, measured on the basis of space that they took up in the test orchard, the most prolific kind seemed to be the ones that had a tendency to revert to the wild hazel type. The better and thinner-shelled types, more resembling the filberts, seemed to be shy bearers so that there being a host of new plants to catalog (more than 1000) which had not indicated their bearing characteristics, we included these among the possible ideal plants we were seeking. Although there were several plants that could be considered commercial in the original group of over 650 it has been thought that the waiting of a few more years to ascertain whether there would be something better in the next 1000 plants to bear that would be worthwhile waiting for and no attempt has been made to propagate the earlier tested plants. Some of these 650 tested hybrids proved to have nuts that were classed as Giants being much larger than the filberts produced by male or pollen parent such as the Barcelona, Duchilly or Daviana, and several times the size of the nuts of the female parent |
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