The same year, 1937, in which I obtained the Polish nuts, I also bought one hundred pounds of Austrian walnuts, to serve as a check.  Eighty pounds of these consisted of the common, commercial type of walnut, while the remainder was of more expensive nuts having cream-colored shells and recommended by the Austrian seed firm as particularly hardy.  Altogether these nuts included approximately one hundred varieties, twenty of which were so distinctive that their nuts could be separated from the others by size and shape.

About two thousand seedlings grew from this planting, most of which proved to be too tender for our winter conditions.  The seedlings grown from the light-colored nuts show about the same degree of hardiness as the Carpathian plants.  Many of them have been set out in experimental orchards to be brought into bearing.

After the first year, the English walnuts progressed fairly well.  Large trees, which had not been entirely worked over at first, were trimmed so that nothing remained of the original top, but only the grafted branches.  The winter of 1938-39 was not especially severe and mortality was low, although it was apparent that all of the varieties were not equally hardy.  Even a few of the scions grafted on butternut stocks were growing successfully.  I had made these grafts realizing that the stock was not a very satisfactory one, to learn if it could be used to produce scionwood.  As the results were encouraging, I decided it would be worthwhile to give them good care and gradually to remove all of the butternut top.

Each fall, the first two years after I had grafted all these walnuts, I cut and stored enough scionwood from each variety to maintain it if the winter should be so severe as to destroy the grafts.  Unfortunately, the grafts had developed so well, even to the actual bearing of nuts by three varieties, that in 1940 I did not think this precaution was necessary.  Then came our catastrophic Armistice Day blizzard, the most severe test of hardiness and adaptability ever to occur in the north.  Many of our hardiest trees suffered great injury from it, such trees, for instance, as Colorado blue spruce, limber pine, arborvitae; cultured varieties of hickories, hiccans, heartnuts; fruit trees, including apples, plums and apricots, which bore almost no fruit the next summer.

Although not one variety of English walnut was entirely killed, all, except one, suffered to some degree, and it was not until late the following summer that several varieties began to produce new wood.  The variety which showed the greatest degree of hardiness is “Firstling,” originally known as Letter F. Although the primary buds on the Firstling were nearly all killed, very few of the small branches were affected and the union itself suffered no injury.  Second in hardiness is Kremenetz, much of its top being killed, but its union being only slightly affected.  No. 64 was affected in about the same amount as Kremenetz.  Increasing degrees of tenderness and, of course, decreasing degrees of hardiness, were shown by the many other varieties, some of which may never recover completely from the shock of that blizzard.  The seedling trees suffered only slight damage so that I expect that they are hardy enough to produce fruit here.