Here in Italy, pecans are virtually unknown and hard to find. If you can find them, they’re expensive IMO. Maybe it’s normal to pay $40 for a small pecan tree, but to me it’s expensive.
I know the trees you buy are grafted, but can I grow some from seed if I get somebody to send me some from the U.S.?
How old can the seeds be? Do the seeds you want to sprout need to be green or can they be old?
TIA
I think you need a better title, nothing to do with pecans that would attract those knowledgeable in the subject. However I don’t grow pecans my parents have a pecan tree and the squirrels plant a few dozen every year so I’m sure the seeds will grow in a variety of conditions. $40 for a grafted tree is less than shipping a pound of pecans to Italy though. International shipping isn’t cheap, once sent a relatively small package to Poland which contained about $70 worth of stuff for $100 shipping.
Basically what @Gkight said. Shipping from the US would be pretty expensive and any reputable sources will probably only send with a phytosanitary certificate, which adds additional costs.
The question is what do you want to achieve? Here in Austria during Christmas you can sometimes buy fresh Nut mixes for St Nicholas’ day which have pecan nuts (though these will probably be southern type cultivars). I have successfully stratified and planted such nuts in the past. While I no longer have access to the trees I can tell you that after the first five years they remained small trees, not even 2m high. It will probably take 15 years for them to even start flowering.
Do yourself a favor and buy two (pollination compatible) grafted cultivars that are suitable for your area. They say time is money and in this case you are buying years less waiting time.
In addition, with seedlings you have no idea if the trees will have quality nuts. If they don’t, you will have to end up grafting them anyways.
In my eyes the only time it makes sense to plant seedlings is if you are planting a very large number. Then you can select the good varieties out of the lot and graft them over the rest.
Good luck with your endeavors!
(I edited the title of the thread to help draw in some responses)
That statement couldn’t be more true. Pecans often take more than a decade to start fruiting well. Also, maybe there is some differences in money, but grafted pecan is pretty expensive in the US and this is where they come from.