Author Topic: Butternut Seedlings (Read 9900 times)

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #60 on:** September 16, 2009, 03:19:09 am »

I have seen some dead ones below home but none dead around here yet and we have some pretty old ones around. I have not made it out on the old farm yet, waiting for hard frost to collect some nuts. I'll see how those trees are. The little brook back there that comes down between fields is lined with butternut trees. Maybe I'll go out there this weekend.

bandmiller2 · « **Reply #61 on:** September 17, 2009, 05:04:15 am »

Are you guys growing the butternuts for the nuts or the wood.Only my humble observation but the nuts don't seem to be worth the hassle to get the meat out.I grew up with brown mouth and fingers.When a kid late after dark I hauled a big wagonload of walnuts home by seven the next morning squirrels had stolen every nut.Frank C.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #62 on:** September 17, 2009, 03:43:27 pm »

Both Bandmiller and aesthetics, and yes they are worth every morsel to me. Nothing you want to go into commercial production over though.

bandmiller2 · « **Reply #63 on:** September 18, 2009, 06:22:26 am »

Swamper its been 50 years since I've opened one mayby I should try them again.Being kids we just smashed them with a rock to open and spit out the hull pieces.Whats the best tool to open them??A friend in Maine had a big tree over his camp I used to bring my sheridan pellet gun and lay on a blanket and pick off the red squirrels.Frank C.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #64 on:** September 18, 2009, 11:36:00 am »

Hammer and a brick.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #65 on:** September 20, 2009, 09:18:21 am »

Went out this morning and picked about a gallon of butternuts along the creek. There were about 25 mature trees I searched under. Not a lot of nuts this year. Most came off one big old 20 inch dbh tree. I saw many big branches that the ice broke on some trees and in a couple of the crotches were some inhabitants, coons.

Only dead trees I found were runts in shade and one that bulldozing smothered the roots.

Going out to bury them after lunch.

bandmiller2 · « **Reply #66 on:** September 21, 2009, 05:28:14 am »

Swamper,if you were going to eat those butternuts [insted of hideing them for the squirrels] what would you do store them and let them age or what??I had high hopes their was a higher tech way to extract the meats than wacking with a hammer.A friend is going to give me a bucket full,says he needs a hard hat on his patio.Frank C.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #67 on:** September 21, 2009, 03:31:59 pm »

Find a room the rodents can get to, namely squirrels and their ilk. We put down news paper on the floor and spread them out until about December. The thin husk will wither and dry up, so you just rub that off before hitting it a crack with the hammer. Easy to rub off. We used them in fudge, I suppose brownies would taste good to.

A local bakery used to call their bread Butternut Bread before the Ontario Eastern Bakeries syndicate bought them out. "This is butternut country" the TV add would say with a covered wagon being hauled by horse through the country side.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #68 on:** July 16, 2011, 08:32:13 pm »

Checked on some butternut seedlings today on the woodlot, put up some fresh winter grade ribbons to mark'm as I do. Most are chest high now (some 2 year olds are 14" or so) and the rabbits have not bothered them, which is surprising. Any of the red oak seedlings I spied where chewed last winter with new shoots off the stumps.

Probably marked a dozen, but didn't get around to all the locations.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #69 on:** July 22, 2011, 04:09:16 am »

Found 3 more seedlings on the edge of the lawn and one suckered back in the lawn that my brother snipped off last summer mowing. Never thought that one would live. I guess, never under estimate the will to live.

Jeff · « **Reply #70 on:** July 31, 2011, 08:23:54 am »

Donk, there were a couple of butternut trees that grew on the old farm where by Dad was born and raised. By the time I was old enough to remember seeing them when pointed out to me, they were in pretty bad shape and have since died quite a few years ago. I am sure from blight. They were my Dad's favorite tree and I could see the sorrow in him when we would look at those dieing trees. I bring this up because I dreamed about it last night and I dreamed you smuggled me some seedlings that we planted at the Pigroast next year.

So I'm asking, can you smuggle me some seedlings?

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #71 on:** July 31, 2011, 09:05:22 am »

What are friends for again?

A couple two years old, the second one down is the one that my brother cut off mowing. The last is of a couple nuts that recently fell off, they are not mature yet this early. These trees and another one or two I found are in a nice line with the older yard trees in the back yard.

Jeff · « **Reply #72 on:** July 31, 2011, 09:24:14 am »

I think they would do okay here, but the only gauge I have is that there is a couple walnut trees growing right up the street, even though we are probably 60-70 miles north of the typical walnut range in Michigan. The only deer we have right here in the last 27 years was Dizzy. We never used to have any Rabbit's but in the last 5 years they have become quite prolific. I would guess a rabbit would be the greatest threat to a young tree. That and our sandy gravel soil. Any tree I have planted here stands in apparent stagnant growth for the first 4 or 5 years, but them they take off and grow like crazy. My conclusion to that is they are spending most of their available nutrients putting down roots. A 10 inch red maple here will have a root ball 6 foot across. The Oaks however seems to go deep and not as massive a root system as the Maples.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #73 on:** July 31, 2011, 10:54:25 am »

Well, all you can do is try, I would mix some good potting soil in the natural soil of your ground to help out the roots of the seedlings. They are not shade tolerant so after awhile they need good light to thrive. They like soils with calcareous bedrock if it is dryer. The soils here where it grows wild is moist dark loam often shallow because of the water table so you don't get a well developed tap root just long laterals. The trees here would take anywhere in Michigan since we are further north. Ours are an isolated population away from the continuous range.

Jeff · « **Reply #74 on:** July 31, 2011, 01:40:26 pm »

The trees that were at the old farm grew on the little salt river river flats. Lots of moisture and probably lots of nutrients, but prone to frequent flooding. The flats also had ironwood, bitternut hickory, ash and sycamore. If you came up off the river flats it was a completely different forest type, predominantly oak maple, some ash and whitepine, but there was one shag bark hickory. I don't know of any hickory trees around here, and we are only about 25 miles North, however our elevation is much greater here.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #75 on:** July 31, 2011, 02:19:40 pm »

There are a number of species here that don't grow naturally in the other two Maritime provinces. The Saint John River is a little paradise so to speak of odd ball species. Other species unique from the rest of the Maritimes is bur oak, silver maple, and basswood. But butternut will grow here on ridges and in gulleys, fence rows of fields, and line the shores of little small streams. The best butternut log I cut was on the ridge out back in with sugar maple, basswood, ash, yellow birch, beech and ironwood in dark loam soil with a little creek starting from springs near by. It had a twin nearby and a lot of saplings and seedlings of butternut in the area. That whole ridge has a mix of butternut across it for as far as there is woods. And the little stream down hill of there that meanders through fields is lined with butternut.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #76 on:** September 16, 2011, 05:21:59 pm »

My uncle said today that a butternut tree I transplanted from the farm here to his place back in 1997 has produced nut(s) this year. He found one had dropped from the tree recently. I told him to save any he finds.

I estimate the tree to be 20-23 years old.

So Jeff, if I make it with those seedlings next year, you have a stab at harvesting nuts in your senior years.

Sunday I may go collecting nuts in the butternut grove.

thecfarm · « **Reply #77 on:** September 17, 2011, 05:47:07 am »

I have not checked mine. I only have 3 on my land. A big one and 2 real small ones.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #78 on:** September 20, 2011, 04:12:08 am »

Not very many nuts this year at all. My brother picked up 7 nuts out in the grove and my mother has another 12 nuts from the Woodstock area.

From the butternut grove on the farm.

SwampDonkey · « **Reply #79 on:** September 30, 2011, 05:12:07 pm »

Picked these today under the yard tree. They are a little larger than the ones pictured in the last couple posts.

The butternut trees are pretty much naked of leaves now, accept the more protected seedlings.

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Author Topic: Butternut Seedlings (Read 9900 times)