Hmm, I read on the internet that wood ashes are beneficial for pecan trees. Well, I know what I’ll start doing with the ashes from the old Ashley stove.
Black walnuts, plums, pears and crabapples benefit also.
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Peaches benefit immensely from wood ashes. Borers don’t bother trees surrounded by ashes.
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I’m not sure how many years it takes for a pecan tree to be considered full grown. May vary among cultivars. The Sumner is in its 14th year and produces maybe 3-4 lbs. of pecans in a year.
I have several grafted pecan varieties bearing for the first time for me this year.
‘Miller’s KY Wonder’… scionwood came from Cliff England, many years ago. It looks, for all intents and purposes, to be ‘Mahan’ (or a Mahan seedling)
‘Mohawk’ also a ‘Mahan’ seedling, is bearing a better crop than in years past.
Third variety in this group, I long ago lost ID on… I’m thinking it may be Maramec, also presumed to be a ‘Mahan’ seedling.
All have that extremely thin shell typical of ‘Mahan’… which is, to me, the quintessential ‘papershell’ pecan variety.
All filled fairly well - but you can see at the far end of each kernel, there’s a little shriveled segment that didn’t completely fill. I’m sure all will probably get worse at filling as they age.
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That Miller’s Ky Wonder does have a ‘pinched’ look. Nice pecans. How many years do you think that it took for your pecans to production?
I have a Mahan that came in production just last year. It took about 9 years to production. Looked more like the Mohawk in your picture. The squirrels got its pecans this year.
I see that the Starks Hardy Giant (or whatever the name is) in the other thread is listed for 10-15 years. I suppose that I tend to get overanxious in a long wait like that.
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Admission up-front: the Miller’s and Maramec(?) are still stuck in the nursery row where the seednuts were planted at 6-inch spacings, around 1998, so they have been incredibly crowded for the entirety of their existence here. I don’t recall when these were grafted… probably at least 20 years ago… but if they’d have been free-standing, uncrowded trees, I have no doubt that they’d have come into production much earlier.
Mohawk has been a disappointment. It scabs. It bears shyly - a handful of huge nuts most years, most of which are poorly filled or don’t split shuck at all. I don’t spend much time trying to find a decent nut from it, when others are better and more productive. If I happen to walk by and see what looks like a good nut, I’ll pick it up, but I regard it as something of a surprise when I find a good one.
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Around here Stuarts are one of the latest to produce nuts. We have some older trees that produce 250-400 pounds in a good year. Water, fertilizer, and zinc helps keep them going.
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We went to Oklahoma to visit my Mom and sister this week. Since we can’t get them here, we stocked up on 10lb of cracked Pawnee nuts. They should produce about 5lb of nut meat after shelling.
We also picked up a couple 1-2lb bags of unshelled Pawnee and Desirable. I thought Pawnee was a big pecan, but Desirable is even bigger. Spent a bunch of time yesterday trying to crack and shell them with an old fashioned cracker without destroying the nut. Think I almost have it figured out.
D is a big nut, has a mild, sweet flavor, but P is more oily, and tastier, I prefer it more than any other variety. The pecan crop this year in Oklahoma was a very productive one.
Here’s some pics.
Ten pound bag of cracked Pawnee, cost about $50, which seems high, but it’s actually cheaper than it’s been in the past.
Pawnee on left, Desirable on right.
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That’s a good price. Cracked and blown runs $5-10 a pound here. Cheaper to buy than grow.
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I got to try several varieties of pecans this fall… thanks to the generosity of a fellow fruitboard member here.
Of the varieties that could be grown in TN… Kanza was my favorite.
They go very well with figs and persimmons.
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Yeah unlike everything else that’s going up in price, pecans have been steady the last few years. Guess the supply has overcome the demand.
The grove we went to had lots of Pawnee but were about out of the small bags of Kanza. I like that variety but prefer the Pawnee.
Don’t you grow pecans? How was your harvest this year?
Here’s the site of the place we went to, it’s in Bixby, a suburb of Tulsa, OK. Their shop is open for just a few more weeks, but they do ship year round if anyone’s interested.
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The shellers have the growers over a barrel. Best prices around here, in the shell, were $.75-1.25. Many are either getting out or not putting overhead into it. After figuring in our fertilizer, mowing, etc. we lost about $5000
or more. Older trees are on a down year anyways. Most farmers need to make $2.50 a pound to break even. Thank goodness it’s not my livelihood.
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How does foreign competition (specifically China) effect the current pecan market? I would gladly purchase in-shell pecans in the grocery stores or roadside stands if I could find them. I don’t understand the difficulty in finding. What price would I expect to pay for in-shell pecans at these places?
Maybe it’s not the difficulty of finding but the prices that I would have to pay. I don’t know. These days everything is high.
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Roadside stands recently were selling in-shell pecans between $3 and $6 per pound depending on variety. China put an import ban on pecans a few years ago which had a disastrous effect on in-shell prices. I saw very good quality pecans selling for $2.50 per pound in bulk a few weeks ago. Stuart and similar were $1.25 to $1.50. As Staziak said, growers can’t make a living if buying fertilizer and paying for sprays.
Making money in this market is feasible with native pecans where the only input is cost of harvest. A few improved varieties that do not require high inputs are also profitable.
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I’m going to have to disagree with that statement. I totally heat my home with a wood stove and dump the ashes around all of my trees. I have had borers in my apricot, peach and nectarine trees. In fact I lost one of my young nectarine trees to borers last season.
Wood ashes are a great benefit though to all plants growth. Maybe I just need to apply more ashes. I will give it a try this winter and see if that will eliminate the borer problem.
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Your statement is confusing, to me anyways. Are you saying you saw unshelled pecans going for $3-6/lb or $1.25-2.50/lb?
The cracked ones I got were about $5/lb. We picked up some unshelled Pawnee and Desirable at another location for $4.50/lb.
Another question, do all varieties have same amount of fat per pound of nut meat? If not, is there some kind of database on the fat content of different varieties? The reason I ask is that Pawnee seems to have a richer flavor than others, so does that mean it’s oilier?
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Unshellled pecans sold in roadside stands recently were selling for $3 to $6 per pound. Basically, they were paying $1.50 or so to growers and doubling the price for retail sales.
Growers were being paid $1.25 to $1.50 per pound for Stuart pecans in bulk bags, typically 1000 pounds or so per bag. Cost of production currently is about $2.50 per pound so growers can only make money by either selling premium varieties for a premium price or by selling retail direct. Many orchards in Georgia, Alabama, and Louisiana have farm stores to get retail prices. I have purchased pecans in bulk a few times over the years, usually a few hundred pounds at a time.
Premium varieties of pecan include Schley, Forkert, and Elliott. If you have never eaten premium pecans, you don’t have a basis to understand how much of a difference there is in flavor. I purchased 400 pounds of Elliott pecans in December 2020 for $.75 per pound. After paying a commercial cracker and picking out the pecans, we wound up with about 200 pounds of edible kernel. I used up the last bag earlier this year. I am now working on some very good quality pecans from Auburn which I picked up a couple of months ago. I should mention that there are a bunch of good pecans, but very few of them will bring premium prices. Premium pecans generally have very high oil content. Not to be a snob, but Pawnee is a second tier pecan. It is good, but oil content is several percent less than Schley.
Why are pecan prices so low? It is a combination of factors including the China ban and increasing production world wide. For example, Mexico and the U.S. are currently producing about 90% of world supply. Mexico was a very distant second as recently as 10 years ago. U.S. plantings of pecans increased by several million trees in the last 10 years. South Africa and parts of South America have huge plantings just starting to produce. Demand for pecans is relatively inelastic meaning purchasers will only buy so much. With literally millions of trees worldwide coming into production, the result is depressed prices.
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At least 30 years ago I planted 3 northern pecan trees that I purchased from OIKOS in Michigan. One died the first couple of years, one struggled somewhat and one grew pretty good. The best tree is about 35 ft tall with a dbh of 6" and the smaller one is about 3" dbh and about 25ft tall. Both trees were supressed by a large sugar maple for most of their early years. They have made significant growth since the maple was removed.
Every year I have looked for blossoms and nuts. Every year has been the same, nothing. No blossoms in spring and of course no nuts. Well today was different, lo and behold there was something up in the upper branches of the bigger tree that looked like a cluster of pecans. Further looking and there was another cluster of 5. YES my pecan tree has finally produced fruit. Now how do I get them down and how were they pollinated.
My crop is not much compared to others in this thread but it’s a start. Now I have to plant more.
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If your location is Niagara, NY and you purchased seedling pecan trees, you are seeing exactly what seedling pecans normally do which is take forever to produce a crop. It looks like the pecans did not fill well enough to split shucks before cold weather. You can use a long pole to knock the pecans off the tree, or just throw a stick at them enough times to knock them down.
Pecans are normally wind pollinated. Some pecan varieties self-pollinate which results in poorly filled nuts. It is likely your two trees are compatible at least in one direction.
Your best options for grafted trees are Campbell NC4, Warren 346, and Lucas. Earlton is a recent release by Bill Reid that is likely to mature in your climate. Check with https://rockbridgetrees.com/ and/or https://www.grimonut.com/
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Yes I am located near the north east corner of Niagara County on the South Shore of Lake Ontario. I have land across the street from my home that would be an ideal site to plant quite a few pecan trees. That site is 100 % full sun and is a little warmer than where I have my two current pecan trees. Quite often in the summer and spring the air temperature at the lake side of my home is 15 or 20 degrees cooler than the temperature 200 ft south of the lake shore. The temperature difference in fall and winter is much less, only a couple of degrees at most. I assume that extra heat and sun exposure would be a big plus for ripening pecans.
Our local soil and water extension is offering shagbark hickory seedlings that I could plant for root stocks and then try my hand at grafting a couple varieties of scions to the hickories. Planting root stock now would give me some time to select the best varieties of pecans to graft onto them. Seems like that would be my best option to maybe see a nut crop t my age.
I am open to any and all suggestions or advice from the group. There seems to be a lot of experienced pecan growers here. Wish I had started younger.
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