Of that list, Thomas and Sparrow are the standout best overall for your climate. It would be a good choice to locate Farrington and/or Neel #1 and put in a few trees for diversity.
Thomas originated near King of Prussia Pennsylvania in the 1880’s. It is vigorous and very productive. Sparrow originated in Illinois and is a very productive tree of medium size nuts. It is a good pollination partner for Thomas.
Awesome thanks! But does that mean that you cannot confirm Bicentennial and Weschke as rootstock parents as suggested here? In their latest catalogue St. Lawrence nurseries praise Bicentennial to be a well-producing, hardy and vigorous tree with high-quality seedlings.
Weschke was selected as a variety to produce in zone 4 climates. If you were in zone 4, I would suggest it. It is relatively unproductive as compared with Thomas or Sparrow.
Bicentennial is not as productive as either Thomas or Sparrow. It would still be a good choice if your seedlings wind up being planted further north from your location. If you wind up planting Bicentennial, you might want McGinnis and Cranz as pollinators.
Thank you so much!
I collected black walnuts from a grove that contains all varieties selected for ease of cracking and eating, including Emma Kay, Rowher, Hay, Sparrow, Hare, Frank, Bud and more. There are also heartnuts, Persian walnuts and butternuts in the same grove.
I am going to plant a lot of the walnuts. How likely is it that the open pollinated nuts will produce trees that will still be superior for cracking?
I will be adding about 3 acres of black walnut trees to my farm.
I have a large number of seedlings I grew this year, from nuts from wild trees on my farm, that I will graft scions onto in the Spring, from the previously mentioned varieties, but would like to direct sow, hopefully superior trees too.
About 1 in 10 walnuts grown from selections such as you list will be good to very good cracking walnuts. Where you will find a problem is with total production per tree. Very few seedlings of improved varieties produce an economic crop of nuts.
Sparrow tends to be a highly involved pollinator as a protandrous variety where most of the other named selections are protogynous. You will likely find that many of the seedlings grown have Sparrow as the male parent.
Are you growing walnuts for nut production? Or to sell timber in 40 or 50 years? There are very different needs depending on goals. If you want nuts, start by planting the trees about 30 feet apart or more up to 40 feet. If you want timber, 20 feet apart will give reasonably good results.
Care of seedlings is very very important. They have to be kept weed-free for optimum growth. A healthy seedling should reach 5 or 6 feet tall in 2 years and add 4 to 6 more feet of growth each year.
my seedlings dont go anywhere near that fast! They are kept relatively weed free, but my soil leans towards low N. Ive got some 2nd year seedlings out there that are only 2 feet tall right now.
I get similar growth rates.
Hope so. Planting some with hopes of shading my 2nd story office window this spring. Went with kwik krop which seems like an ok one.
kwik krop is mediocre. For your area, Thomas and Neel #1 would be possibilities. S127 and Sparrow would arguably be the best adapted.
Ive heard this aboht kwik krop. And heard this about Thomas. But hows the growth rate on all of them?
Also the one i got but can ask to swap is actually boellner which i believe is also kwik krop.
Sparrow is the only one on your list i could easily swap
Kwik Krop is a dog here. Probably oughta graft it over to something better. But it was the favorite BW of my friend Gordon Nofs at Flint MI.
It would be nice to have a thin shelled timber form BW. It seems like Black Walnut lumber is in higher demand than the nuts. I don’t think that it should be that way, but thats what we have to work with for now.
What would be the best seed orchard design to select for timber seedlings and thin shelled nuts? You would think that it would take a tree less energy to make less shell 
I would think that it would be best to have maybe 3 cultivar parents, Thomas, Sparrow, and Pounds #2. And then 3-6 grafted timber types for pollen. Plant them at timber spacing and label by mother tree.
Any thoughts on the new MO cultivar Hickman?
Thomas is hands down the fastest growing of my grafted black walnuts. It is NOT the fastest growing walnut when compared to some local walnuts which do not make acceptable nuts. This is a well known effect where trees of a given species tend to adapt to a region based on day length and number of growing days. In other words, southern walnuts tend to grow significantly faster than northern sourced walnuts. Thomas is from King Of Prussia Pennsylvania. I know of a wild walnut tree south of Selma Alabama that produces extremely vigorous and fast growing seedlings. It would be a good walnut if I wanted to grow timber. It would be a useless walnut for producing nuts.
Neel #1 is the second fastest growing with Farrington a close 3rd. But here is the thing, there are places where Thomas, Neel #1, and Farrington would not be the best choice to plant whether for timber or nuts.
Stark started grafting Boellner about 50 years ago. They renamed it Kwik Krop because it typically produces nuts 4 to 5 years after transplanting. It is not a very productive tree. It is middle of the pack for growth rate. Here is a comparison you may be able to use. I picked up walnuts in my planting about 10 days ago. I harvested Thomas, Neel #1, Cranz, and Farrington. I will go back in a few more days and harvest a few more varieties. I won’t harvest Kwik Krop. Other varieties I will harvest are McGinnis (no crop this year, heavy crop last year), Sparrow (low crop this year), S127 (low crop this year), and Football II (medium crop this year). There are half a dozen more that made a light crop that I may harvest if I have time.
At one time, Stark grafted and sold Thomas trees. Roughly 60 years ago, Henry David Haggerty bought a Thomas tree from Stark and planted it beside his house near Dadeville Alabama. In 2001, David Griffith took me to see that tree. it had a produced a huge crop which we harvested. When I say huge, we picked up 40 buckets (5 gallons per) of walnuts in the husk. I went back that winter and cut a few scions which I grafted onto four of my trees. The largest 2 are now over a foot diameter.
Treefrogtim, you could easily use Thomas as a timber and nuts tree. It tends to grow very vertical and to produce a heavy crop of nuts yearly. I’ve grown seedlings from Thomas that are in some cases as good as the parent. This is RARE in walnuts!
excellent news i aparetly accidentally bought a seedling of kwik krop. i will just graft thomas on top LOL. i tossed it in as it was only about 10 bucks and i was buying another tree from this nursery
I used to be optimistic too. Then reality hit.
hit me, is it not an easy graft? although i have looked for a bout 12 seconds and havent found someone selling it so im GUESSING thats the issue
Walnuts are difficult to graft… Period. But there are a couple of methods that work fairly well. Remind me to point you at a post describing how to graft walnut successfully.
maybe i’ll just resell this one to someone looking for a shade tree and get a grafted tree. Is thomas the same as thomas myers aka Hays? if not i’ll look harder for a thomas, just my normal sources dont have one
Hay #1 is a seedling of Thomas. It is not the same as Thomas. Grimonut has Thomas.