North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["Kieran and Donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

Lucky,
     I too am curious about Joe's attempts.  I've been meaning to report on
my own, 4 grafts on 2 trees this spring, waited late as recommended and we'd
had 9" of rain in March, so I thought it would be wet enough in spite of the
drought all summer and fall.  All grafts failed, as did the 16 hickory
grafts.  Could still prove to be Fedco's crummy "Parafilm" which really
doesn't compare to the real thing.
    BUT, this is the exciting part.  My one grafted tree has about 8 walnuts
on it this year!  'Myers' must be rather precocious, as it's only been 3 or
4 years since I grafted it, and the tree is maybe 3" dbh.  The other,
slightly larger tree that just won't take a graft no matter what I do, it
has a walnut or two on the remaining limbs after the spring butchering and
failed grafts, but the nuts are the very round shape we see on most local
walnuts.  This Myer or Thomas Myer is an elongated shape.  When I went to
MTSU to see their hican and jujube trees, the different shape and the
fibrous looking hulls on two walnuts were what made me wonder if they were
grafted trees.  I mean, if the previous groundskeeper had planted hicans,
might he have planted improved walnuts too?  The current head of grounds had
never, in 27  years on the job, cracked one.  I used a ballpeen hammer,
barely hit a nut and it cracked open neatly.   I scoured the lawn, the
parking lot, the sidewalks,  and brought home 20 gallons of easy crack
walnuts.  We really enjoyed them, but what a shame no one had been eating
them in all the decades they'd been there.  Donna