North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Jwlehman@aol.com]

Hello Jim,

At Indianapolis lives my Bro-in-law, Charles Spurgeon. Charles has been working with Carya species now for many years. He is an expert in NNGA and Indiana Nut Growers circles. Charles has one of the largest hickory variety collections in the US, also many far northern pecan varieties. I forwarded your question to him and here is his response.

I have never used any specie of hickory for rootstock when grafting shellbark, shagbark, mockernut, hican or pecan.  I use pecan rootstock for all of the Carya genus.   Pecan will grow a bit faster than any hickory which will prevent the rootstock from being over grown and result in  premature tree death.

Grafting success here in Indiana is a function of how well the rootstock is growing, the temperature (90 preferred), and good rainfall.  Of lesser importance is the type of graft.  I started grafting shell and shag hickories in the early 1980s and now have 80-90 cultivated varieties growing in 40 foot orchard formation to get plenty of sum.  The older trees have been producing for the past 3-4 years.

This year they have a surprisingly good crop after a cold week in April in the 20's, one morning 16 degrees--all after a hot March with 2 weeks at 70-80 degrees.

I put on grafts on Decoration Day weekend to take advantage of the expected 85-90 degrees heat and rain expected in June, but this year 60's and 70's and minimal rain.  A poor showing of grafts resulted.

To my knowledge, nurseries use pecan as understock nearly 100%. 

Jerry


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