MOUND CITY - A few trees became 1,500 trees over the course of a lifetime for rural Mound City resident Jerry Peterson as his hobby continues to grow by 25 trees per day.

Peterson, a retired KCP&L employee, along with his wife Velma, began the project in 1962 growing walnut trees and learning the art of grafting different varieties to parent trees.

"I've been working with walnuts for years," said Peterson, "Abe Stanbaugh got me working with pecans." He continued that he began working with grafting experiments and found from thousands of tries only three that were good.

Peterson, who owns 750 acres with many of it covered in rows of trees, said he grafts 45

different varieties but mainly Kansa, Stanbaugh and Peru.

In the early years, Peterson began the cloning project by taking a graft off of the tree he wished to clone and tying it to the root of a tree that was cut down allowing the cut tree to feed the new shoot. He said trees were in no particular pattern and grown wherever they happen to come up. Now, he plants them in rows.

"I've got 500 at the home place in the bottom lands," said Peterson. "The hills don't produce that good - I'm finding out which varieties produce good on the hills."

His current project is crossbreeding walnut trees. He's trying to develop a black walnut crossed with an English variety.

Peterson said he's had good luck but the weather didn't cooperate as two years ago the tornado that crossed Linn County damaged his experimental tree and left very little standing.

"I started two years ago with real grafting," said Peterson. "The trees are numbered and recorded."

He and Velma explained that the grafting process begins in February when they gather silicon wood. Those samples are kept in the refrigerator until the time comes to graft them onto the parent plant.

"We graft when the trees are approximately half leafed out - usually the first weekend of May, up until it hits 90 degrees," said Peterson. He continued that if the grafting takes, the tree will begin to bear nuts in five years.

He then showed one tree that he had three different varieties of walnuts growing on it with the final picking process to begin in October. Velma then explained that the nuts are held in storage bags until November to ensure they are ripe, then they are taken to market.

"Pecans are ready in November," said Peterson, "they're usually ready when you pick them up."

With that Peterson exhibited another experimental tree, a three-quarter English and one-quarter black walnut. "But I don't know what it will bear until after it begins to grow," he said.

He continued that many times the genetics of the parent tree override the graft and other times it doesn't. He said until you open some nuts you don't know what they are.

"It's a really exciting hobby," concluded Peterson with a smile. "You plant it, cross it and wait 15 years to see what is produced."