Hey Fusion_Power… on your question on Ginseng Seed.
I started growing wild simulated ginseng in 2010 and bought stratified seed from 3 sources over the years, but my main source was from hardwoodginseng.com - the others I just tried out some and well they were more expensive and no better quality, so I stuck with hardwoodginseng for the bulk of my seed purchase.
I have not bought any seed from hardwoodginseng in several years now… Initially you have to purchase stratified seed and plant it… but once you get to year 5-6, some of the plants you first started will start producing berries… and at around year 7-8-9, you will have enough of your own berries to pick and plant, and may not need to purchase any more seed.
If you want to learn more about growing wild simulated ginseng, I participate in a forum over at wildgrown.com – I am TNHunter there too.
If you search youtube on TNHunter and Ginseng, you will find my old youtube channel. I don’t post to it any more and have not in several years now, but there are several videos there on growing wild simulated ginseng, and also hunting wild ginseng.
Growing wild simulated ginseng is a “long term investment” for sure. Some say it takes 7-8 years to reach maturity and harvest quality root, but on my place that is more like 10-12 years.
I did harvest and sell some 8-9 year olds last year but only a few. They are not quite where I want them to be yet.
Lots of older relatives have called them that all my life. I’ll just let them keep using their slang name, it gets the point across . The Scaly/Shaggy ones are fairly easy to identify. Others that don’t have that type of bark, like Pignut, and are 50’+ tall. Not always as easy…
Around here black walnut trees are plentiful. Few if any are a “named variety” yet there is sometimes a fair amount of variability to the nuts/shells/skins. I don’t know if they’re just prone to genetic variance or some other factor plays a part. I’ve wondered before how any of those named ones would compare to the native ones here.
A portion of my property is about as ideal as it gets for growing Ginseng, but… Unfortunately some poachers figured that out and dug all the wild roots a few years ago. I’ve since planted seeds a few times, in a spot closer to the house that’s not quite as ideal, but easier to keep an eye on. I know someone who collected a number of old discarded bed box springs and put them in his woods. Ginseng growing up through them isn’t as likely to get eaten by deer.
TNHunter, The three black walnut varieties that will grow best in your climate and produce best with least effort are Thomas, Neel #1, and Farrington.
Sparrow is a productive tree, the only problem is that the nuts are just too small for my liking. If you were further north in Indiana or Illinois, Sparrow would be a top choice. Note that Sparrow is protandrous which makes it a good pollinator for most of the others.
Boellner cultivar aka Kwik Krop is a moderate producer of moderately good nuts. Others are far better.
Football tends to overbear every other year resulting in underfilled nuts.
Surprise is a pretty good walnut, but tends to produce about 10% blank nuts. Otherwise, it is a second rank possibility.
TNHunter:
I have a 30 year old pecan, I don’t remember the name but it is named after a native American tribe. For it’s first 20 years scab wasn’t an issue but now I have to spray it every two weeks all summer. Apparently the scab mutated/adapted to it’s defenses. It seems to be rather self pollinating. I always get a crop of very good nuts. Anyway middle TN is suitable for pecans. I would spend some time researching varieties.
Thank you for the black walnut recommendations…
Do you know of a good nursery where I can get those varieties ?
I will look and see what I can find.
Hey all, thanks to all who contributed to my search for the right nut trees to try her in middle TN.
One other thing to share… after all this talk about NUTS… my wife and I made a trip to Cookeville TN this week, to vist our Daughter, who lives there, and also our Son, who attends TN Tech University there… (it was his birthday)… the main reason for the trip. Our daughter took us to a nice antique store in Allgood, not far from Cookeville and look what I found…
A nice old cast iron nut cracker. On the back it has this stamped into the oak base… P & L Company, 1303 Western Street, Oshkosh WI 54901.
I tried it out on some pignut hickory nuts and it worked great… cracked them with ease, but did not crush them. Simple just push the nut into the jaws (which get narrower as you go in) … so just push the nut in until it stops and lower the handle. A nice controlled cracking of the nut happens.
I will have to get me some walnuts and pecans to try it on too.
I like old stuff like this that still work great. It is heavy duty too - looks like it will out last me easily.
Just a FYI… I called and actually got thru to David at Rock Bridge Trees today… Super nice guy.
We talked for a while and he obviously knows pecans and walnuts…
I told him the 4 pecan varieties that I was considering (after getting input here) and those were Kanza, Hark, Lakota, Amling…
He said that Kanza and Lakota are type 2, Hark and Amling type 1.
I described my place (upland ridge field, growing some good hickory).
Asked him for his opinion on which 2 varieties to start off trying here on my place. He was very helpful…
He recommended Kanza and Amling…
His thoughts on why… Amling… he said it is a lower producer, something about producing 1 nut (per limb tip ?)… where other varieties like Lakota or Hark may produce 4-6 nuts in a cluster.
He said on my (less than Ideal growing location) going with a tree that is not such a heavy producer, will probably mean that the nuts that do produce will be good nuts (filled out)…
Where if I planted a Lakota or Hark… they may try to produce 4-6 nut clusters and just never be able to fill those.
I can understand that… and I am fine with producing less nuts, to get at least some good nuts.
So he is going to provide me with a Kanza and Amling grafted… and I will give those a try.
I can agree with Kanza and Amling, especially if he has some trees ready to ship. Both make medium size nuts in the 60 to 72 per pound range. Amling is distinctly a low producer, but it has excellent pest and disease tolerance. Low production is countered with consistent production year to year and with excellent disease and pest tolerance. Kanza will surprise you with the number of good quality nuts it produces.
I live halfway between Chattanooga and Knoxville, and I planted Kanza and Peruque pecans about 6 years ago, but last year the ambrosia beetles killed them both. I don’t figure I have time to start over so am not replanting. Had never heard of the ambrosias before so by the time I learned of them the damage was done. Very sad…
I planted Precocious Hazelnuts from Oikos about the same time. They are growing very nicely and are blooming this year for the first time.
In regards to hazelnuts you should be looking more ate geneva releases (gene etc) as opposed to osu releases (jefferson yamhill etc) as the oregon ones are only resistant to one strain of blight (the one that has turned up on the westcoast decemating hazelnut orchards) whereas there are something like 3 strains back east…just figured you’d want to know/not waste time and money on plants that likely wont be successful
That’s the first I ever heard of them either…now I’ve got something else to look out for. Sorry about your lost pecans. It’s tough to nurse things along for years only to see nature take them out in an instance. Sometimes I think all we can do it plant a lot of things and hope some of them pan out.
Thanks. Yes, I was disappointed. I grew up in NE Texas with pecan trees everywhere, and then spent most of my adult life in the midwest and Pennsylvania. Finally getting back down south (N of Chattanooga, TN) and one of the first things I planted were the two pecans. Between the Japanese beetles, the ambrosia beetles, the stink bugs and now the SWD fly, it is getting a lot harder to succeed as a fruit grower than it used to be.
I didn’t think about doing that. Good idea. I think I am done with pecans, though. By the time they would bear, I would be retired and moving on. I am spraying for ambrosia this year. They say it can take fruit trees or vines.
Does anyone know where to find seedlings of “Major”?
Pecan rootstock in general seems to be a pretty obscure market- far more than pecan trees themselves. It’s so easy to find rootstock selections for fleshy fruits. Is there a reason for this other than the comparatively weaker popularity of nut growing?
Are your trees yielding good crops already? If so, how many years did it take for them to start? Did it seem like one variety was more precocious than another? Is season length ever a problem with Amling for you?
If you’re cracking or thinking of cracking black walnuts with hand tools, it might be very worthwhile to try the named varieties. Between the bigger nut size and the greater ease with which they come out of the shell in larger pieces and sometimes also thinner shells, you might get a lot more nut meat for your efforts out of the named varieties.
There’s also Carya ovalis, false shagbark hickory, which if I believe also typically has 5 leaflets per leaf. And I don’t think it’s included in that Tennessee publication, even though I’m pretty sure it grows in Tennessee. I originally mistook the bark of false shagbark for shagbark (C. ovata) but the nut has noticeable differences and maybe the buds, too.
The bark can be misleading in some cases… the tree shown above in my field… I was sure thinking shagbark… but when the nuts developed this year… they are pignut.
I have lots of red hickory… and several pignut… and have noticed the red hickory and pignut … the nut itself (minus the husk) are near identical… size shape nut meat… the husk on both is thin… the pignut has that classic pig snout… where the red does not. Info I found online says the pignut is often bitter and the red hickory is sweet… but so far every pignut I have tried has tasted just like the red hickory. I have found no bitter pignut yet.
If you can find a very large red hickory… the nuts can be quiet large. I found a couple huge red hickory the other day in one of my hollows and the nuts were 2x the size of others I had already collected. Older mature trees, had much larger nuts.
I heard someone on YouTube say that red hickory are often called false shag. They can get a little shaggy… but still not quite like a true shag bark.
But that one in my field… is a pignut… per the nut… (which normally has a more smoothed bark) but it is very shaggy by the bark. To me it is a false shag… for sure. I have not found any other pig nuts in my woods that have shaggy bark like that… think this one got crossed or confused or something.
I was quite disappointed when I found it had pignuts on it.
A couple comments from my attempt to ID a very similar tree that had me confused might be particularly of interest to you. The first comment is me quoting a retired dendrology professor that helped me out:
Carya Ovalis (Red Hickory) and Carya Glabra (Pignut Hickory) are often considered ecotypes of the same species. They cross readily where their growing range overlaps.
. The Scaly/Shaggy ones are fairly easy to identify. Others that don’t have that type of bark, like Pignut, and are 50’+ tall. Not always as easy…
