How did they work out for you?
I was talking to a guy at the COOP that worked there. He has some acreage. Beside fruit trees, he said he grows various walnuts, chestnuts, hickory and pecans. He said the hickory nuts were small, but he found another variety that produces nice sized hickory nuts. I have never eaten hickory nuts, are they good?
Butternut and hazels are what im mostly into. Some folks go crazy over acorns and chestnuts but not my thing.
Growing hazelnut, almond, pistachio, macadamia - they all grow pretty good except macadamia which is on the border where I live, its surviving though. Chestnuts and walnuts grow wild here, so I go and collect in the fall.
I recommend you grow them, they will give you so much back and you can use them for lots of things.
Enjoy going nuts
Growing Placentia walnut in zone 10b.
I have a number of European hazelnuts, if they can be called trees. They started producing for the first time last year and were excellentāby far the best hazelnuts Iāve ever tasted. So far Iāve found them to be my most rewarding trees. They donāt get damaged by deer, require virtually no attention or inputs of any kind, theyāre compact, very shade tolerant, produce lots of nice straight sticks that can be used for fencing, look nice and taste much better than commercially available nuts.
Iām going to be putting in an almond this spring. If itās half as good as the hazelnuts Iāll be happy.
I wish I could grow pecans, hickories, walnuts, etc. but I donāt have nearly enough space. Sometimes I collect a few of the low hanging walnuts from a tree in my neighborhood, which the owners never harvest. Theyāre mighty hard to crack though, and they donāt contain much meat.
for the quickest nuts, hybrid hazels are hard to beat. they grow like a bush and are easy to harvest. they produce in 3 yrs. and are cold hardy. the nuts are a little smaller than pure euro ones found in the stores but many are immune to the blight thatās killing the pure euro hazels. nut size and production have grown by leaps and bounds in the last 20 yrs. thanks to alot of trials being done in that time. now they are mixing American, euro and Manchurian hazels to get superior nuts. im trialing Chinese / American chestnuts, butternuts, and black walnuts but ive cut my teeth on 5 hybrid hazels and have traded for improved variety nuts that i grew out last spring. looking forward to them in production while waiting for the other nuts to produce.
Zone 6,
Iāve been growing all those nut tree species (only hazels here are natives that were in place at woodsā edge when we bought this farm) for 30 years now.
Only a handful of chestnuts, black walnuts, and butternuts/buartnuts/heartnuts, as Iāve concentrated mainly on pecans and hickories. The chestnuts were/are planted mainly for wildlife consumption, and BW is mostly disdained by the majority of my family members due to its strong flavor.
It is my contention that hickory nuts are the most flavorful nut of all, but I readily admit that if Iām just going to be munching a handful of nuts, Iāll probably prefer pecans over most hickories - though shagbark hickory nuts are awfully good. For baking, IMO, hickories win, hands-down. YMMV.
I have a sizeable collection of grafted hickory and pecan cultivars, and a fairly large planting of named-parentage seedlings. Time to bearing is variable, even for grafted trees. I have some grafted hickories and pecans that were producing decent crops within 6-8 years, but have some grafted hickories that Iām still waiting for nuts, 25 years out - when some hickory seedlings planted in the same plot began bearing at 20 yrs. Granted, these might have come into production sooner, if theyād been pushed with fertilizerā¦ all are planted in good bottomland soil bordering a creek, but all the care theyāve received has been twice-yearly mowing.
Named-parentage black walnuts in the same planting were producing crops at 10 yrs, but thus far Iāve only found one out of about 40 that is worthy of collecting.
āFayetteā shellbark seedlings, grown from seednuts that came from an orchard/nursery with numerous grafted named varieties to serve as pollen parent, are shaping up to be worthy of collection and propagation in surprisingly high percentages, thus far. Pic of nuts from āFayetteā and the first 4 seedlings that have come into production here.
Are all black walnuts strongly flavored, or are some of the ādomesticatedā varieties less so?
They grow like weeds here, itās too bad I donāt care for the flavor.
Havenāt read much about English walnuts on here, wonder if anyone has had success growing them.
Selected varieties are mostly for shells that are actually crackable and kernels that are actually large enough to be worth eating, very little if any actual breeding has been done. Less intense flavors might eventually be selected for but that would be generations of selective breeding (which with nut trees takes a long time) down the road
Black walnut flavor is determined by how long the nuts lay on the ground in the husks. Juice from the husk penetrates the shell suture darkening the kernels. If promptly harvested when husks are still solid green, the nuts do not have the overwhelming flavor.
Since the suture is where juice penetrates the shell and discolors the nutmeat, it makes sense that a tight shell suture would help prevent it. Thomas and Stoker are the only two black walnuts I know of that are better sealed.
Some black walnuts have a rich buttery flavor. My experience is that Thomas, McGinnis, and Stoker have that flavor.
Have a couple of them here. They have not fruited yet, but the trees are doing great.
Persian walnuts (aka English walnut) can be grown in most of the eastern U.S. Adapted varieties are available from a few suppliers or scions can be swapped with growers. Subdood, you are in a good location for persians and heartnuts.
Curious as to whether English can be grafted onto Black Walnut?
Yes. BW is the preferred rootstock for J. regia in this part of the world.
Spring meeting of the KY Nutgrowers Assn. is coming up 19 April 2025, in Bardstown, at the Nelson Co. Cooperative Extension Service office.
and someone is sure to bring scionwood just in case.
Interesting. Is grafting walnut as difficult as pecan, or are they both difficult?
Does Persian grow as fast as Black Walnut?
Last year was my first attempt at grafting walnut and pecan. All my pecan attempts failed and about half my walnut grafts failed. For reference I canāt really remember any failed grafts of fruit trees. Iāve got more pecan and walnut scion to give it another try this year. I think I did them to early last year.
Have you read up on any of the hot callus methods for grafting, especially the posts related to nut trees?
These were already established trees. I think I grafted to early.
