as seedlings he would cancel the order.  Rather than lacking a profitable filler between the orchard trees, I accepted the order of one hundred plants and received from him a fine lot of hazels which took good root and began to grow luxuriantly.  It was several years before any of them began to bear and when one or two did, the nuts were not hazels at all, but filberts and hybrids.  In most cases these nuts were larger and better than those of the original Rush hazel.

One of these seedlings grew into a bushy tree ten or twelve feet high.  For several years it bore a crop which, though meager, was composed of large, attractive nuts shaped like those of the common American hazel but very unlike the true Rush hazelnut.  One year this tree began to fail and I tried to save it or propagate it by layering and sprouting seeds.  Unfortunately it did not occur to me at that time to graft it to a wild hazel to perpetuate it.  I still lament my oversight as the tree finally died and a very hardy plant was lost which was apparently able to fertilize its own blossoms.

I ordered four Winkler hazel bushes from Snyder Bros. of Center Point, Iowa, in March 1927, asking them to send me plants that were extra strong and of bearing size.  I planted these that spring but the following summer was so dry that all four died.  I ordered twelve more Winklers in September for spring delivery, requesting smaller ones this time (two to three feet).  Half of these were shipped to me with bare roots, the others being balled in dirt for experimental purposes.  Four of the latter are still living and producing nuts.

In April 1928, I planted a dozen Jones hybrid hazels but only two of them survived more than two years.  I think the reason they lasted as well as they did was that around each plant I put a guard made of laths four feet high, bound together with wire and filled with forest leaves.  I drove the laths several inches into the ground and covered them with window screening fastened down with tacks to keep mice out of the leaves.  Although somewhat winter-killed, most of the plants lived during the first winter these guards were used.  The second winter, more plants died, and I didn’t use the guards after that.

The two Jones hybrids that lived produced flowers of both sexes for several years but they did not set any nuts.  One day while reading a report of one of the previous conventions of the Northern Nut Growers’ Association, I discovered an article by Conrad Vollertsen in which he stressed the importance of training filberts into a single truncated plant, allowing no root sprouts or suckers to spring up since such a condition prevents the bearing of nuts.  I followed his advice with my two Jones hybrids and removed all surplus sprouts.  This resulted in more abundant flowers and some abortive involucres but still no nuts developed.  In the spring of 1940, I systematically fertilized numerous pistillate flowers of these plants with a pollen mixture.  On the branches so treated, a fairly good crop of nuts similar to those of the orthodox Jones hybrid appeared.