Pecan

I’m sure the same information can easily be found but Wes Rice’s book, ‘Pecans - Volume II A Growers Perspective’ shows photos true to size. Of course photographing pages of a book will not show true to size which is what I did for these photos.

Dax

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Wow Fruit, if I had Desirable they might be really, really huge because my Pawnees are mostly around 1.75 " long. Your Pawnees look more like my Peruques. I am quite happy with the Pawnees I got this year. They are larger than the typical bagged pecans in the store, and I don’t mean the local Missouri pecans, but the ones shipped in probably from Texas or perhaps somewhere in the south. The kernel is also nice and golden, and to me the taste is superior to most pecans I have had. I don’t recall the name of the piston cracker I have, but I modified it by mounting it on a slanted board and adding a longer arm. The Pawnees and Peruques crack out nicely.

Dax, my pecans are indeed smack on with those pics. The Colby do vary significantly in size, and I don’t find their flavor to be as good as the Pawnees or Peruques, so of course the Colby is the largest and most productive of my trees so far. I have many wild pecans, and I will say that their flavor can be very good, but they are mostly too small to tempt me to harvest them. I crack a few, but they often do not crack out easily. At least they serve to pollinate my grafted trees, and I do have some named seedlings I got from the Conservation Department that will be coming along, hopefully before I croak. It will be interesting to see if any of those happen to produce decent nuts.

‘Hark’ is a wonderful nut. I’m so happy something with size grows here. Dax

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Chuck, I’m just a causal observer on this thread.

But, have you seen the new air crackers? I was at a friends farm a couple weeks ago and he demonstrated his air cracker. He claimed it would crack 400 lbs./hr. He had 4 old piston crackers (which he told me were hard to get parts for) would crack 40 lbs/hr.

The air cracker I saw seemed to crack whole halves beautifully.

BTW, I love Barkslip’s description of Hark. I’m almost tempted to plant some Hark pecans here. Maybe I could trade Barkslip some pecan trees for peach trees, lol. Congrats Barkslip on your success, I’ve found nut trees harder to graft than peach trees (which aren’t necessarily easy).

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I suspect that by the time my trees produce 400 lbs of nuts I’ll be so old I’ll have to have my grandkids or maybe great grandkids do the harvest and shelling. They might have neutron beam crackers by then :smiley:.

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Seven gallons of Desirable harvest today after 60 mph winds. That’s 11 gallons so far or about 52 lbs from one tree. Maybe half of what’s on the tree. Tree still has leaves so hard to tell. I’m usually picking up eatable nuts until March.

Wish I had an air cracker!!

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Holy Cow! :fr:

Killer @fruitnut. That ‘Desirable’ is a darn great pecan. I had my share last winter.

@Olpea I’d be willing to trade. I’m a peach or two short. I lost an ‘Early Elberta’ to deer but have a couple ‘Saturn’ and one ‘Reliance’.

Dax

Edit: @ Olpea not @ Chuck.

I wrote a lot of information about ‘Hark’ on the description of this youtube video. It’s flowering time; shuck split; companion pollinator mates; and how the nut came about.
Harvesting ‘Hark’ Pecans November 12 2015

Dax

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I was awakened at 6am by snap, crackle, and pop followed by the tinkle of falling ice. Three more of the same in the next two hrs. Took the top out of my big pecan still loaded with leaves and nuts.

The north side:

The south side:

The greenhouse and trellised orchard:

I feel my wallet getting lighter. No way I can trim that out by myself without safety gear.

Was thinking the other day I wish I had 1,000 acres like this tree and I’d be rich. Not thinking that today. Can you imagine trying to harvest 1,000 acres of nuts with limbs broken and in the way. Tree won’t shake right and you’d be driving on nuts cleaning up all that mess. Agh the life of a farmer!!

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That is horrible. A prized tree for food, of course.

Very sorry to have to see that, fruitnut.

Dax

Oh no!

Here’s hoping it springs back next year.

Thanks, it will spring back fine. It’s just getting old. There was lesser ice damage last winter. The crop was frozen out in 2014 and 2013. That killed back new growth as well. Then in 2014 there was a bad hailstorm that took off most of the leaves in June.

Boy when things happen to you they seem to happen in a big way. The pecan tree is beautiful and huge. And it was 70 degrees here yesterday. Your temperatures are so different than mine. The ice on the wires says it all. Glad to hear the tree will bounce back. Nature’s pruning!

It was 81 here on the 25th and 68 on the 26th. In fact it was 56F just 20 hrs before my tree was crushed. That’s Texas.

Those pecan tree pics made me cringe, Steven. No weather events give me more worry than freezing rain and ice storms. Hurricanes and flooding don’t even come close on my anxiety scale. Maybe the reality is different than my perception, but it seems like our freezing rains usually hit while our trees are in leaf. The world around glistens beautifully as the potentially deadly burden accumulates and wreaks its damage.

I’m glad to hear they will survive, and also glad that your house and greenhouse were not damaged.

Thank you, we’re fine. I cut down a big silver maple that hung over the house about 3 yrs ago. Really glad I did because those aren’t as strong as pecan.

hey Dax,
I am looking for grafted Hark(s) is this something you have information on? Will Kanza pollinate Hark?

Hi Jim, Kanza and Hark are perfect mates.

I’m grafting Hark, Kanza, etc. and will have them for sale on Ebay mid-June or you may contact me here and we can arrange something. I’m going to sell each graft for 15.00

Dax

Hi
I am new to this. I have a few pecans ,hickory and Hican. I am located in northeast N.C.I tried grafting Kanza in 2015 ,failed miserably. Must be too old for this nonsense. Hark sounds interesting ,but have been informed it doesn’t work well in a cracker due to being too short.
Does anyone grow Fairbanks? If so, what is your opinion?
jerry