Page:Tree Crops; A Permanent Agriculture (1929).pdf/247

 THE EASTERN BLACK WALNUT 189

THE BLACK WALNUT AS A FOOD PRODUCER

The black walnut has great possibilities as a food producer. Take the case of the parent Stabler tree. "About fifteen bushels of nuts every other year." To be safe call it an average of six bushels a year; call it ten pounds of meats per bushel or sixty pounds per year.,

The food values of these can be seen by studying the food table (page 304) and then comparing the food yields of some other crops, especially pasture, because pasture produces meat, the rival of nuts in the production of protein as food. The good pasture of England or Illinois gives about one hundred and fifty pounds live weight of mutton or beef. Of this nearly half is waste in slaughter, and there is considerable waste in the meat. Therefore, sixty pounds per year of nut meats 'from the Stabler tree come close in actual pounds of edible food to the product of an acre of blue grass."

The nutrition value of the nut meats is nearly four times as great as that of the meat from the acre of grass. There is room for five such trees to an acre, and there would still be the possibility of further produce from the same land. Mr. S. W. Snyder. Center Point, Iowa, knows of trees that are apparently more productive than the Stabler.

"Grass grows well beneath black walnut because of its deep root system and its thin open foliage, which casts only a light shade." **

Mr. James Dixon, land owner and bank president. Easton. Maryland, says that wheat beneath walnut trees seems to be actually better, and Mr. Ford Wilkinson, of Rockport, Indiana, says, "A catch of red clover can be gotten under a black walnut tree almost any season whether ground has been limed or not."

18 There is a noticeable resemblance here between the French equivalence in the rental of an acre of land and a walnut tree (page 167).

qllaitied States Department of Agriculture. Farmers' Bulletin No. 1392, p.