Peaches and stonefruits are not sensitive to juglone.
Perhaps that’s why I’ve never noticed any effect.
Yup, there was one running over my head while I was there. But I’ve never seen them eat any (let alone a lot) of black currants or elderberries, which is what I’ll probably fill most of the space with. This place could give me most of my berries for jam, leaving my yard for the “real” fruit 
The Shagbark is pretty distinctive and I didn’t see any. The nuts are also different (smoother, off-white). It was a bit squishy from the rain yesterday, but not too swampy. The elderberries should like that.
Good point. I think there will be enough water, but shade is always an issue in my area. Lots of big trees around.
Bob,
As a bit of a tangent, do you have much problem w/ SWD there? I never hear too many complaints about it in the NE, but it’s a big enough deal here I would never plant berries which I didn’t intend to spray. I know an elderberry grower here who has had to start spraying his berries.
It would be interesting to know why SWD isn’t much of a problem in the NE. Perhaps it’s the winter lows, but you and I have the same hardiness zone. I’ve not seen this discrepancy addressed by any expert so far in fruit publications.
Alan manages all kinds of plantings and hardly mentions SWD, yet it’s so bad here, I had to throw out about 10% of my late peach crop. Blackberries would be a complete bust without sprays.
SWD is a big problem for raspberries and blackberries here. It doesn’t seem to take an interest in much else, though I think I saw a few impacted elderberries one time. I’ve never seen it in any other fruit (knocks on wood).
I’ve cut out a lot of fall bearing raspberries and am trialing 3-4 new (to me) blackberries which I hope to ripen before SWD gets here (early August). I wonder if there are so many caneberries around that they don’t need to bother with the harder fruits?
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Recently purchase 40 acres that is pretty much a blank slate, virgin prairie. I was thinking about planting some black walnuts just for fun. Now Im not sure this is a great idea… I dont want to introduce more insect pests and fruit is my main interest… Is this a bad idea? Someone gifted me a bag of about 50 locally grown black walnuts I could plant.
Black Walnuts are an amazing tree that has a bad rap. They taste wonderful and have a special something compared with regular walnuts.
I grow fruit trees almost directly under a massive 90 foot tall (with corresponding spread) black walnut. The juglan poisoning appears to be mostly overstated. I have posted photos elsewhere on the forum.
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You may be successful since most of the impact is from pests that can cross from walnut to fruits. Don’t plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, or potatoes near black walnut.
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Tomatoes do just fine near Black Walnut based on years of experience. I dont know about peppers, eggplant or Potatoes.
I have found that if the soil is plowed and prepared traditionally . That most things grow ok near walnut
( this assumes roots are cut with plow , soil deeply cultivated ,yearly)
Left un disturbed intercropping is questionable ?
Pawpaw does well. … As do walnut ! ! !
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Ramv, have fun. I do tomatoes for a living. I also have 50 acres of black walnuts. You can guess that I don’t plant tomatoes in the walnuts.
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I have seen apparent negative affects of black walnuts, but a lot of orchards I manage don’t receive irrigation and black walnuts are extremely competitive for water compared to most other forest species, so it’s hard to know what causes the stunting.
I’ve seen blueberries not merely stunted, but apparently killed under them while soil remained moist. Anecdotal info at least reveals the possibility that it is or isn’t a problem in all soils and situations but I wouldn’t ever want to rely on anyone else’s anecdotal observations but my own in my own orchard or the orchard where the observation occurred.
Searching for research based info indicates that there is particularly strong evidence of negative affect of BW’s near apple and pear
trees. I’ve seen stunting of peach trees near them, but that could easily be a water issue as peaches and cherries are reportedly resistant to juglione poisoning. They create a very tight network of roots where they grow and rapidly dry out the soil with the slightest drought when in leaf.
In finer soils the poison builds up more and symptoms reportedly can take years to build up in affected trees. The longer black walnuts grow the more juglone they deposit in the soil- it builds up slowly and leaves the soil slowly if you cut down a BW tree.
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Daffodils will not grow under black walnuts.
Anecdotally, I’d say pomegranates don’t play well with black walnut either:
When I was 8 years old, I rooted cuttings from a pomegranate growing at the home of a neighborhood friend. Planted them on the farm, at my grandparents’ home, where we moved to 10 years or so later. As an 8-yr old, I didn’t know anything about juglone… probably didn’t recognize the young black walnut growing 15 ft away… and wouldn’t have known about any ‘danger’ at that age, either. The poms grew, albeit slowly, but never flowered or fruited. And, as an 18-20 yr old, I had things on my mind other than fruit trees…
Fast-forward 30 years, my parents had to have a new septic leach field trenched and installed and the main line trench ran between the BW and the poms… close enough (like, within 2-3 ft of the trunk) to the BW that sufficient root damage caused it to eventually die after struggling for a few years.
BUT! The poms exploded into flowering/fruiting, with my Dad often sending 20# care packages of fruit to us in MO & KY every October.
I now know a bit about walnuts and juglone… and also, that it shouldn’t take 30+ years for pomegranates to come into bearing.
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Fast forward 3 growing seasons and all 3 pears I planted are doing fine, though they haven’t grown very quickly. I got my first fruit this year, a Korean Giant graft on a Euro pear, on quince roots. No spray and it came through perfectly (and the squirrels didn’t take it either!). I’m guessing that won’t last…But this one was very nice. I picked it a bit early (Sept 13th), but it was better (17-18 brix and good texture) than any of the KG that I grew in my yard this year.
I did plant a mulberry and it has grown well, as a very large bush. I’m going to have to start hacking it back a bit more, now that it is getting traction and growing faster.
This past spring I added half a dozen jujubes there and so far they have done OK. They almost always start out slowly for me, so it is hard to know.
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I don’t think that’s a ripe pear. My KG’s don’t get good until a couple weeks after they turn golden. I just ate my first good one 2 days ago, previously even the golden ones were like cardboard.
Walnuts seem to be a breeding ground for coddling moth here.
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It tasted ripe to me. I was surprised as well, but maybe when there is only 1 fruit on the tree it can ripen a bit quicker. It was actually the best Asian pear I had this year. I had a lot of Korean Giants rot on the tree this year. The ones I picked in early October were hit or miss. Mostly miss. Some 20th Century, Misharazu, and Jillin weren’t bad, but none really got the brix up like KG.
Well for a KG it is freakishly small so early ripening isn’t surprising- it’s just I’ve never eaten a ripe one that wasn’t Golden. Often the season isn’t long enough to ripen all the pears in a tree on some sites.
True- it is smaller than some I’ve gotten in the past. But the ones from my yard were about that size this year. I’m sure more thinning would help, but I don’t think that was the only issue, as there were some branches which were fairly sparse.
Maybe it wasn’t as ripe as it could get, but I was very happy with it. Also, I’d been watching it for a while and when I saw squirrels running around near the walnut tree I figured I was pushing my luck leaving it on longer. 