Harvesting Black Walnuts

[ahlkey]

I would like to try to germinate a large number of Black Walnuts from seed and my question is if it is ok to pick them directly off the tree at this time of year or should I wait until they first fall to the ground?   They have just started to drop to the ground and this weekend I was able to gather 30 or so but the problem is that the trees are located on a property location that I don't normally travel to that often.   I am afraid that if I wait until they fall to the ground the squirrels will get them before I have a chance.  However, I don't want to pick them too early before they are ready if they will not germinate?   I have three nice Black Walnut trees that have many bushels of walnuts this year and one specifically has large branches full of walnuts that can be easily be picked by ladder or my electric manlift.  Thoughts?     

[beenthere]

My thoughts are that the nuts that drop early are not good. Crack open a few and see if they are wormy inside, or are hollow. Seems we have an early drop this year and a heavy crop, but have not cracked any open to see how the meats are inside.

Also, the hickory nuts this year are huge and plenty. Will inspect a few for worms. Again, the early drops seem to be empty or wormy.

[Magicman]

My White Oaks will start "casting off" the culls very soon.  The tree knows when something is wrong with the fruit.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah, my butternut tree cast off all it's duds about a month ago. There were not many up there to begin with. I think shoot moths are to blame on low fertility, they eat out the terminal bud where the nut flower emerges from. The pollen comes off round buds on the sides of the branch. I've got some walnut to, and they have had meat inside most, but I have never got them to break dormancy or sprout. Butternut however, if good seed, sprout like weeds around here. They should be about ripe. I wait for frost because I'm not a good climber. A friend of mine tried sprouting Ontario black walnuts by burying them next to the cement basement wall of the house so they didn't get extreme cold. They still never sprouted.

My white oak seed didn't pollinate, no pollen so they all dropped awhile ago.

[ahlkey]

Cracked a few open as suggested and most had meats and were good.  The other question I was trying to find out was if I can pick them off the tree before they are ripe and drop to the ground will they still be good for germination?

I also have a lot of butternut trees at another site so I will have to check how they are doing as well.

[JimTwoSticks]

Good rule of thumb is the softness of the outer husk. If you have ever squeezed a walnut (or butternut) in the summer that is the "hard" stage. In the next few weeks they should soften slightly and are ready to be picked even if still attached.
One thing to note is the seed that falls on the ground will often still be viable. There is a somewhat noticeable weight difference between a filled seed and one that is messed up. Cracking a few will give you a good comparison.

Good luck racing the squirrels.

[ahlkey]

Thanks for the responses.  I do plan to float them to sort out the better ones before planting.  I also will fence them in with chicken wire as I fear the huge number of squirrels will dig them up for sure.  It is always more work that anticipated but I hope to plant a few hundred or so and see how it goes.

[HiTech]

       I have both Butternut and Black Walnut trees. They have about the same amount of nuts as previous years. I have thought about planting some nuts and see if they start but the squirrels seem to do a good job of it. The ones they don't store in my wood piles in the sugarhouse for winter eating they bury in the ground. Perhaps this is nature's way of assuring future trees. Mother Nature always seems to take care of herself.

[SwampDonkey]

She does, but less chance of having the tree come up where you want it. Like butternut germinating on my lawn from squirrel activity.

[Chuck White]

I have 2 Black Walnut trees in my back yard.

Not very big yet, about 8 inches on the stump.

Of the 2, one is a Putney Black Walnut and I don't remember what the other was, but the Putney has nuts this year.

I checked around under it yesterday and found 1 nut.  There are quite a few on the tree.  I was surprised.

I know that in nature, the nuts sprout while just laying on the ground or wherever the squirrels bury them, so I would guess you wouldn't bury them very deep.

Now, if I wanted to plant some of those nuts, is there anything special I would need to do?

[shelbycharger400]

put em in the freezer for a few months,... then pull em out.. and wrap them in a damp paper towel. keep it damp... they will grow in bout 2 to 3 weeks.        the freeze thaw helps crack the nut.

[beenthere]

I've heard recommended to plant the nuts in a soup can (both ends removed) to help prevent the squirrels from digging them up during the winter and spring. The can rusts away over time. Probably an inch of dirt over the top of the nut to simulate buried by the squirrel. Ours will freeze over the winter and pop up all over the place in the spring...especially in the Mrs. flower bed.

[ahlkey]

I am planning to put chicken wire down on the perimeter of a fence (dig down) in order to keep the squirrels from digging them up.  I have planted about 100 or so small Walnut trees these past 3 years with a lot of success around the woodlot but never any from seed.   The deer do some damage at times but so far it has been minor.   The young Butternut trees are all doing reasonable well but all of the Butternut trees from young to mature are affected with the Butternut canker.  Slowly all of the Butternut trees are dying off but a few are somewhat resistant.  This is one reason I am trying to supplement their loss with Walnut trees. 

[jueston]

The squirrels love to dig in my lawn, but no trees every sprout I think they are looking for the nuts they buried before, but forgot where….

[ahlkey]

Luckily I was in the area today when 45 mph winds hit dropping a huge amount of walnuts.  So it was indeed time to harvest and I collected around 100 gallons of walnuts  (20 - 5 gallon pails) of which most of them came from one large 18 inch tree.   So early next week I will shift to planting for the winter but it sure seems this year we are seeing a bumper crops of walnuts.

[ahlkey]

Additionally with so many walnuts would it be reasonable to just plant them with the husks intact.  The idea of removing so would be alot of work so if I would rather just plant (3) together per hole and see what I get in the spring?  Anyone have any experience with planting walnuts with husks intact?  Thanks

[Chuck White]

I was thinking the same thing ahlkey, more than 1 nut in each hole.

But I'll go around in the Spring and remove all but 1 sprout so as to produce better timber.

[beenthere]

ahlkey
I wouldn't bother with the early drops, nor bother with any that the husks didn't turn black and mushy.
When the husks stay tight and green on the walnuts that drop, to me suggest they are the immature culls that are not worth the effort.

After last night's wind, there are a gazillion nuts on the ground now. Within 34 hours, the husks will be mushy and slough off into a black slime. Then the nuts can be picked up easily. Plant them or clean for cracking after dry.

[SwampDonkey]

I never remove the butternut husks and drop them in a 2" hole, scuff the ground and mark all the new trees I find next year.  My memory is much better than a squirrel's.

[beenthere]

But.....he's talking black walnuts, not butternuts.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, but but but. I'm sure if the husk was required to be removed before germination that it would be extinct long before this.

[beenthere]

Not to continue the discussion, but I didn't say anything about "requiring" the husk to be removed.

The point trying to make was the husk of a black walnut would drop away as mush IF the dropped nuts were mature (and not the early immature nuts that fall early). I don't think those early black walnuts with tight green husks are worth planting.

And may be the same with butternuts...just too long to remember and don't recall.

[SwampDonkey]

I follow you on those points. But, about the only thing I go by as far as being developed enough is if they drop early they are duds and if they are not filled out well they are usually no good. I just went this afternoon under my yard butternut and found some well developed nuts to full size. Earlier ones I found in August were 3/4 developed, so they were left for the animals. Ones my brother picked up for me in the grove must have been early drops to, same story. And yes they seemed to have green tight husks. He doesn't observe such things like I do, they are just butternuts.

The leaves have dropped off the butternut trees pretty much now and has never been cold. Of course it's declining light that triggers it, but just the same when it's warm like this you don't expect it. The leaves this year don't seem to be very colorful except for smaller trees. They just seem to be going brown too quick and falling. You see a few nice colors, but it's not really peek time yet either. Some of my yard trees are pretty much bare to: white birch, ironwood, poplar (populus), and boxelder (one in front yard is green, back yard tree is bare).  Sugar maples in the woods where I was thinning this week are yellow orange as they should be though.

[ahlkey]

I collected some more today so I have more than I really need for my attempt this year at planting from seed.   As far as the early ones I will donate them to the squirrels but the current ones look ripe and a nice yellowish in color --- please see my picture gallery as I am having problems posting it directly.

The past two years I planted 100 Walnut trees around the property from a local guy who grows them at $2 a piece.  They were already about 3 ft high when I planted them and they are doing great.   About 25% of them I fenced to keep the deer away but the rest fo them are doing ok even with some deer damage.  

It is good to hear I can bypass the the husking work but I do agree that once they are soaked they get mushy and really fall apart anyway.   I plan on putting them in the ground early next week and thanks for you input.

[Chuck White]

So, from all that I've read, I would guess that planting them 1-2" below ground level now and letting them go through the natural germination process will do the same thing as putting the nuts in the freezer then planting them in the spring. 

[ahlkey]

With such a large volume I just will not be able to plant them all this year.   So I will follow the advice of digging a pit "spread out the nuts, and cover them with 1-2 ft of sand and mulch. Then cover the pit with screening to keep the rodents out and when the ground thraws in the spring --- dig up the nuts and plant in 2 inches deep (three per hole)".  As with most of things this will be a big effort in the spring but I will then have more time to plant everything.

[beenthere]

With such a large volume I just will not be able to plant them all this year.   So I will follow the advice of digging a pit "spread out the nuts, and cover them with 1-2 ft of sand and mulch. Then cover the pit with screening to keep the rodents out and when the ground thraws in the spring --- dig up the nuts and plant in 2 inches deep (three per hole)".  As with most of things this will be a big effort in the spring but I will then have more time to plant everything.

Maybe just need 1-2 inches of sand and mulch. Two feet is a lot of work burying and also digging them up.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah a couple feet of turf is pretty heavy duty.

What I did with red oak acorns one time was I harrowed up a spot below the garden, scattered the acorns and raked them in the newly worked ground and took wheel barrows full of sugar maple leaves to cover the works. I had oaks galore nest spring. But many of the oaks did get girdled by mice because of all the grass that grew up. If your growing hardwood around here, you have to have very short herbs like wild strawberries for ground cover or the mice will move in on you. I planted about 500 yellow birch, if I recall, on an adjacent plot where an orchard was removed and those are about 10 feet tall now. The seedlings were green house started, and at that point they were only 4" tall from the nursery. When I planted them they were 12-16" tall. I walked the fertilizer to them when I received them for a few weeks.   The seed was from my own collections.

I tried 3000 on the woodlot but the moose and rabbits had great fun, took them about a week or so.

[ahlkey]

I had already dug the pit which is about 10' X 6' or so.  It was in sandy soil so it really was not that difficult overall.   I followed the write up from the University of Minnesota PDF - "Growing Black Walnuts" which recommends 1-2 ft of sand or mulch for good stratification in a pit.  The hard part really will be planting next spring as I figure I have around 200 gallons of walnuts which have to be a few thousand in total.  Three years this past spring I planted 10,000 two year red oaks and white pine. I used a planter at that time as I was reclaiming 10 acres of a field but this will all be done by hand around the woodlot in a number of clearing areas.  The property did originally have a lot of Butternut trees but all of the mature ones are either on the decline or been cut.   So I thought I would try Walnut trees. 

[Chuck White]

The wind is really taking the walnuts off the tree today.

Do the nuts need to be husked or just bury them 1 - 2 inches below the surface?

We have an area at my brothers camp that's rolling hills and very stoney, I think this would be a good place to plant!

Any thoughts?

[beenthere]

Black walnut grows best on deep soil that has washed off the hillsides (think good corn ground ). They may grow and exist on stoney hillside, but won't do their best.

[Chuck White]

Sounds good we have that too.

I would think that just take them as they fall and bury them shallow, that way they can still freeze and crack to enable germination.