For some people 50 years might seem a long time to be interested in heartnuts; I must admit it does not. While growing heartnuts has been my passion, we were doing other things which were of great interest to me. My story begins when my brother and I first started growing nut trees.
Our first trees were Carpathian walnut seedlings. On June 12, when the seedlings were about 6 inches to 10 inches high, we had a heavy frost and they froze to the ground, but the trees sprouted and grew a foot or so. These trees never seemed to be affected by cold winters until about 15 years ago when many of them died in the spring. Evidently, we had a "hot pocket" causing the trees to break dormancy; then we had two or three cold nights. We believe this was responsible for the die off because a mile away the same grafted varieties did not show any injury. We still have a few of these trees living today.
About the time we were growing Carpathian walnuts, we also began growing heartnuts. We grafted scionwood obtained from J.U. Gellatly of West Bank, British Columbia. We also obtained nuts and scionwood from Scotland, Ontario. We have experienced winter kill in some of the Gellatly varieties.
While experimenting with heartnuts and Carpathian walnuts we became acquainted with George L. Slate of Ithaca, New York. He was kind enough to send us scionwood of filberts from German origin which we grafted to seedlings in our nursery. We layered them the next year and by the third year planted an acre of those trees. Also, we purchased some of the Jones' hybrids from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The German filbert varieties did exceptionally well; my brother and I made quite a few crosses from which we obtained some excellent nuts. We had about 150 new varieties of filberts, a number of them bearing, when the orchard was destroyed. We had planted alfalfa in a field by the filbert trees and the Buffalo leafhopper cleaned them out by feeding or causing lesions on the trees. In two or three years all was gone.
In the meantime, the heartnuts were alive and flourishing. I have tried some hybrid work with the heartnuts but have not had much success. My experience has been that heartnuts do better when grafted to native black walnuts. Some varieties of heartnut trees seem to start growing too early in the spring and grow too late into the fall; this is curbed by grafting to black walnut. The majority of our heartnut trees do very well.
I would say that a heartnut also needs to be a good "cracker" and bear well. Some varieties bear every year and others every other year. Flavor also varies from one variety to another. I believe that only about three varieties we have would crack out close to 100%. The best cracking varieties I have are Callandar, Mitchell and Okanda. Some varieties ripen at least two weeks earlier than others; one of Gellatly's called Stranger does so, but it is not hardy and has considerable winter kill. We have a number of people gathering our heartnuts; therefore we do not know how many pounds our trees produce.
In grafting we used the bark method and sometimes the cleft method. Selecting good scionwood is important, timing is also crucial. We were always lucky in grafting. It seems that our enthusiasm was working for us. Our trees were grafted to black walnut 50 years ago and a number of them cover over 60 ft. of ground. The largest is the Walters from British Columbia.
I would like to end by telling you an observation of mine. I have noticed after many years of nut collecting by squirrels that the young on our farm are born with a permanent smile on their face!
* Elton Papple was a nut grower and nut breeder from Brantford Ontario, Canada.
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