Sorting pecans today. Have lots to do. This is a couple 5 gal buckets worth…pulling out halves to sell and damaged nuts.
We will probably end up with a couple barrels of shelled nuts once we are finished. 
We have a pecan nut buster cracker and sheller. Now we will finally be able to make good use of the 12 trees on the place. Yippy!!!
Nice, I can smell the pecan pie from here!
Pecans bring a good price these days
Jealous! Twelve trees on yer property? Did you plant them or were they there when y’all got there? Do you know which varieties you have?
We love pecans, just can’t get them here. We try to get some when we go back to OK to visit, costs about $20 for a 5lb bag of half shelled nuts.
We planted 8 pecan bare root trees three years ago and they all kicked the bucket within a couple years. So disappointed, will not be buying BR pecans again, will have to try potted ones next time, if there is a next time.
Some of the trees were here when my father in law bought in '67. Some were planted later. Here is one of the big old trees.
the one to the left of that tree is much bigger.I have no idea the varieties. Some nuts are elongated, some are round. Most are thin shelled, some are consistently better…ALL are tasty.
This was a few days ago out shaking the tree and picking up nuts. They use blowers to get them in piles, then we sort on a waist high table.
Nuts on the ground in this picture.
Congratulations on the pecan crop! Nice.
Maybe you should try planting pecans, and once your seedlings get going graft them?
The nuts are cheap…
Glorious.
Do you ship?
We have been selling some locally.
The boss here says 10 a pound plus actual postage.
He doesn’t mind just filling a freezer for the rest of the year.
Wow what a harvest, what’s the total poundage of the shelled nuts? What will you use them for besides selling some?
I don’t know if I have the patience to wait on seeds to sprout then wait on them to grow, only to butcher them in an attempt to graft them. I understand they’re very difficult to get to take. Even though @Barkslip seems to have developed a pretty good technique.
Not sure what total poundage will be. We are still getting nuts off the trees.
Pecan butter, pecan milk, pecan cookies, pecan pie, and just plain eating!
It is food from our own place, and we don’t use any kind of chemicals. My guys take nuts to snack on at work.
I can understand not wanting to wait on something that is still a gamble. So many of these growing projects are long term investments…or even gambles.
what about squirrels?
We have boys with dogs and air rifles. Squirrels don’t live very long here.
Yeah, if I had that many I’d probably eat a pound a day. I remember when we got those bags of half-shelled nuts, I’d sit on the couch and shell them-two would go in the bowl, and one in my mouth, for um, “quality assurance”.
Regarding spraying, isn’t your climate warm and dry, so that probably helps keep diseases like pecan scab down? Also y’all grow apples, so wouldn’t diseases like scab and fireblight be less likely? We live in FB central, warm, humid, and rainy.
I think I’ve seen a tich of fireblight on our pears.
No issue but coddling moth with apples.
Some of our pecans get small black spots on the nuts. We pull those when sorting because they don’t taste as good.
I’m not even sure what pecan scab would look like. The nut trees have always been no trouble food here.
Pecan scab is a fungal disease and I think it makes the husks turn black, and I guess eventually the nuts. It is really bad in the south and southeast, where they grow most of the pecans. They really have to spray to keep it under control. Some varieties have been bred that are more resistant than others.
You guys are blessed to be in an area that isn’t as conducive to such diseases.
We are at the extreme range of pecan growing, it’s just about too cold for trees to make it here, plus it’s not warm long enough for them to get good kernel fill.
Subdood……just make sure to get two trees that bloom at the same time. And plan to amend the soil with some micronutrients. Then you can grow pecans. I have a retired friend who used to be a 4-H agent and school principal…has pecans…but it was a long while from planting until fruits.
That’s in Somerset/Pulaski County in Kentucky. It 's a little colder and length of season for some cultivars will be a problem in NE Kentucky.
Big thumbs up Jolene.
Grafting pecans is best to wait until the seedlings have good caliper like an inch diameter or more then bark graft them or 3-flap/banana graft. Works like a charm.
Bob @subdood_ky_z6b you should be growing Kanza and Hark in your zone and climate.
Best,
Dax
Thanks for the replies, @BlueBerry and @Barkslip. I had two each of Oconee and Caddo (type 1) and Lakota and Zinner (type 2). Five or six of them died after the first year and the rest were gone the next. We dug deep holes for them, and they had a decent taproot but sparse feeder roots.
Don’t know exactly what happened, it seemed like the grafts didn’t do so well, or maybe it was the lack of roots that did them in. Or maybe they were the wrong varieties for our location.
In comparison, I bought a bare root pecan at a local farm supply store two years ago for my Mom and it has flourished since I planted it. But it had great small roots and a big taproot. But this was in OK, too, so much different climate.
In the future if I got any more, it’d be potted ones from Nolin River, and get the ones Dax and Darrel has suggested- Hark, Mullahy, Kanza, etc on Major rootstock.
Curious Dax, do you sell your grafted pecans, and if so, what do you charge? You can PM me if you wish. Thanks.
You can look me up in 2020 if you haven’t found potted pecans by then. I’m germinating in large tree pots Kanza as the seed stock from an orchard in Northern Missouri that I’ll definitely be grafting mainly Hark and Kanza onto.
I’ll probably sell them for 15$ each + shipping. Maybe 20$ if they’re really nice trees.
Dax
