Red Fern Farm has an article that says zinc spray and ground treatments solve walnut bunch disease. Anyone know if that is true?
Walnut bunch disease - at least what I know of - is caused by a mycoplasma (like a virus) that canāt be eliminated from the plant.
I am curious if anyone in the northern half of Wisconsin has ever managed to harvest any pecans. I have planted several over the past eight years or so. I think one or two are maybe alive, but probably just sprouts from the rootstocks. A couple were from Grimos, others from elsewhere. I donāt plan to try any others at my age.
I do have 14 butternuts on a tree for the first time this year, though. I hope they make it until harvest. I read online to wait until they fall.
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When it was first released, āCreekā was touted as a precocious cultivar, recommended as a ātemporaryā cultivar for older orchards being renovated over several yearsā time.
It was supposed to have been a MohawkXStarking Hardy Giant cross, but genetic analysis showed the pollen parent to be āWesternā, rather than SHG.
https://pecanbreeding.uga.edu/cultivars/alphabetical-list/creek.html
I donāt know how Creek would do in a home/low-input planting. I have one Creek tree, but itās stuck in a nursery row, overtopped by much more vigorous trees - all of which are too big to transplant.
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61-1-X is 4-5 year precocious when bark grafted to a hefty rootstock. (2) trees here in the Northern Pecan belt began producing at the same time and now are probably 7-years now and also have a lot of nuts. Itās vigorousā¦
Itās F1 seedlings have amazing vigor compared to most-anything. I put it at a tie with a F1 Hark. Hark takes longer to produce nuts. I donāt know how long. Probably the normal time of 7-8, years.
Iāve seen 5-6 foot creeks at the nursery with nuts on them. I just assumed it was from stress. Even so you would still need an equally fast pollinator. Seems like we need a dwarfing Pecan rootstock.
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Where are you located, Robert? If there are other pecans of bearing age within 1/4 to 1 mile of your tree, you might not need a dedicated pollenizer.
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Iām thinking about just buying 4-5 seedlings to graft after they are established. Sounds like the cheapest way to get in the game.
Just today discovered first pecans on a Mahan (it was labeled Mahan when i bought it) pecan tree. Really large pecans. Squirrels will probably get the few though. Quite happy since I only paid something like $8 for the tree at a flea market called 1st Monday.
I had previously thought about grafting it since I was unsure about it since I bought it at a flea market. Glad that I didnāt.
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Nay - In my humble opinion you would still be better off to buy grafted trees. The price you pay for them is still a bargain compared to the expense (both your time and stuff like fertilizer, etc.) in the long run. Just shop around.
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I have been chatting with Lucky_P and decided to post this. It is a critique of the Florence pecan growing near where I live. Iām critical enough to look not just at the good parts but at the flaws each tree has. Here are the flaws and some of the good points from this tree. Post 555 in this thread shows this tree 3 years ago.
- Tends to have some fuzz on the ends of the kernels, not much, but enough to detract from kernel quality. The fuzz can easily be removed by rubbing. A lot would fall off in commercial cracking plants.
- Some of the kernels are not filled out to the end. This runs about 1 in 40 or 50 nuts.
- Some of the nuts have thin kernels, usually a sign of an overloaded tree.
- The kernel is a bit tight in the shell making it more difficult to crack in halves. It still cracks better than Kanza.
- Production appears to be high with 5 years estimated production running about 100 pounds per year with one year that was about 70 pounds. This year was easily 120 pounds of pecans. This tree has about half the crop load of a similar age Lakota I saw at Auburn. Lakota is known for severe overbearing.
- This tree shows very little signs of foliage disease. At worst, there are a few specks and spots from scab. It gets hit a bit by pecan weevils resulting in black spots on some kernels. Otherwise, there are no significant insect or disease problems.
- This tree has never been fertilized. Iām going to carry a bag of 13-13-13 by and put it around the tree sometime next spring to see how it behaves with a bit of nitrogen in the soil.
The tree is confirmed a seedling by Earl James who set it out @30 years ago. He dug it up from an area with Stuart trees about 200 yards from his house. Iāve seen the Stuart trees. They are typical of the variety. He also set out a handful of other seedlings about the same time. None of the others are worth a second look. The tree is growing about 50 feet from an arm of Shoals Creek meaning it never experiences drought. Production has been consistent for the last 5 years since I spotted the tree in the fall of 2018. I had to make a cell phone call and pulled off of highway 72 and drove down a side road to a turn around. When I saw this tree loaded with pecans, I decided to grab a few. Since then, Iāve been back every year to verify production.
Maturity is in mid-October about 2 weeks after Kanza in this area. I would not grow it in zone 5, but most of zone 6 should be long enough season to mature a crop.
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Blankenship and I donāt like long & slender nuts. Thereās a preference to consider. Iāve seen fuzz on other cultivars. It sounds like āFlorenceā sort of falls into the same situation/category. That looks nothing like a āStuartā seedling. Thatās a real oddball. Most are true to seed from Stuart. Thatās why pecans in the south are called āStuartāsā.
I donāt graft long & slender nuts.
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Dax,
I am of The South. In my world, all pecans were not called āStuartāā¦ if/when we call it a āStuartā, itās because it was a nut from a āStuartā treeā¦
We had āStuartā trees in the grove surrounding the farmhouse, but also had āElliottā, āMahanā and āSchleyā and unnamed seedlings that were rootstocks that lost their graft sometime between when they were planted in the 1910s-1920s and when I came on the scene nearly 50 years later.
IDK if itās still the case, but as recently as 20 years ago, there were probably more acres of grafted āStuartā pecans in the Southeast than any other variety.
I have one āStuartā tree in my orchard, grafted from one of the trees in the grove back home in south Alabamaā¦ but Iāll only have the oneā¦ it does occasionally ripen a crop before freezes hit, but it scabs pretty badly, and its not uncommon for the nuts to freeze on the tree before shuck-splitā¦ I really only keep it around for nostalgiaās sake.
As to āStuartā coming ātrue from seedāā¦ IDK about thatā¦Iāve not personally grown out Stuart seedlings, though Iām sure that a significant percentage of the āvolunteerā pecans around the farm I grew up on were seedlings of Stuart, courtesy of squirrels, crows, jays carrying off nuts and losing them. I wasnāt observant enough in those days to look at a nut from a seedling tree and say to myselfā¦ āThat looks like a Stuart nut.ā or, āThat looks like a āMahanā nutā. They were just pecans to me - though even as a pre-teen, I could recognize the difference in a Stuart or a Mahan or Schley - and knew which trees were which.
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Fred told me all thisā¦ sorry & thank you & very best regards.
Dax
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Nothing to be sorry aboutā¦ it was just ānews to meāā¦
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cool
lata
Dax, Stuart is noted for throwing extremely variable seedlings, most of which are worthless. Even in controlled crosses, Stuart is a lousy parent due to the extreme variability of seedlings. Stuart is a short fat pecan by most measures.
I disagree with the statement about long slender pecans. They can be just as good as pecans of any other shape or form and are preferred for commercial cracking.
When I wrote the review of Florence above, I deliberately posted everything I know that could be a problem with a pecan which a few people now have grafted. Iāve seen too many people in years past go all gung ho about a new tree, a new variety, the best greatest new variety ever. Most such donāt survive 20 years in the real world. If Florence is going to make it, it will do so by being consistently productive of good flavored pecans that people enjoy eating.
No rose colored glasses allowed, this is a pecan with a good bit of potential, if nothing else, for breeding. High levels of scab resistance are rare in a pecan this size.
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I understand it all. Disease; thatās awesome about its resistance.
I just happen to like round nuts and so does Fred. Why I was told all that about the same variability and on and on I canāt say. Not even twice I guess. Iām just floating along like a frog on a lily pad.
Dax
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What is the primary reason for rotten pecans? I donāt mean the ones that have lain on the ground for an extended period of time but ones right off the tree. My supposedly Sumner tree also has more āskin-tightā pecans than I wish. What causes this?
My vote for most disliked pecans are the non-edible ones. 
Stinkbugs maybe. Kernel fuzz is another no-one likes.