Stick with pecans and hickories for now.
Wait for T-92 and if possible, Underwood hican. At minimum wait for a T-92 (you do need (2) hicans as you’re aware.)
I think John at Nolin may have Underwood as a stock tree. You should ask.
Dax
I have some McGinnis to send you. PM me an address. Caution that a lot of them will fail to germinate, but there should be enough viable seed to get 30 or 40 trees.
Unless you’ve got oodles of extra space, I’d leave hicans out of the equation. Notorious for being shy bearers, and of the nuts being produced by the 6 bearing-age(and 5 more varieties not there yet) trees in my nut grove, I’d hazard a guess that less than 1% of nuts are filled and 95% of those are a total loss to weevil infestation.
I knew they were shy bearers, but had no idea they could be so poor at filling in. Are your trees grafted named varieties? You wouldn’t think any of the named trees would be poor at filling in. I have the space but dont want to waste time and money if it isn’t going to produce.
All grafted, named varieties.
Bixby, Burton, Palmer planted 22 yrs ago; first nut crops on Burton & Palmer this year…still waiting for Bixby to bear.
Vernon & Jim Wilson, grafted on established pecan seedlings, have been bearing for several years; weevil magnets…
James, grafted about the same time as V & JW, finally made a few nuts this year.
T-92, MacAllister, Huntsville(TX), and Tom Greenwood hicans are, as all seem to do, growing vigorously…but who knows when they’ll ever bear…and I don’t know that they’ll be worth the wait.
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I have a 20 year old grafted James tree that produces 99% blanks every year. I found one filled nut so far this year.
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I cracked out probably 50 hican nuts yesterday…from 4 different varieties…the ones without visible weevil exit holes…only one well-filled nut, and 2 or 3 poorly/half-filled nut meats that were worth eating.
Pollination should not be an issue, with multiple hican, pecan, and hickory cultivars all in close proximity, and soil fertility/is good(they’re all planted along the property line, near the neighbors’ septic leach fields!).
But…vast majority, year-in/year-out, are blanks, or are lost to weevil infestation
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So when they say shy bearer this is what they mean? I assumed that meant a tree might only produce a few pounds instead of say a few dozen pounds a year, which I’m not concerned with maximum production as much as taste and other things. If these trees are known to produce that many blanks I’m glad none are available, that many seems crazy. I can just try more hickory and pecan.
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That’s what I always thought when I read that…low production.
But…after 2 decades of growing them, there are more issues than just productivity.
I have multiple hicans - both shagXpecan and shellXpecan, pecans spanning the pollination spectrum, shagbark and shellbark hickories, so adequate/appropriate pollination should not be an issue.
With no sprays, weevil infestation is a fact of life here, but while most pecans & hickories may have <1% affected(some much more) the hicans are almost ALL infested- IF they fill at all.
Stopped by the nut grove at the local community college yesterday- there’s a ‘Pleas’ bitcan in there…producing its typical heavy crop of thin-shelled slightly astringent nuts, well-filled, but nearly 100% weevil infested
Three years out… Jim Wilson & Vernon hicans producing a moderate crop of 99% ‘blanks’ &/or weevil-infested nuts; bet there’s not a ‘filled’ nut in the bunch. No nuts on Bixby, Burton, Palmer (all 25 yrs since planted), McAllister, T-92, James, Huntsville(TX) hicans.
Good crop of nuts on grafts of Simpson #1 and Garnett shellbark hickories. 23 yr old seedling of Fayette shellbark, in the CRP bufferstrip, is bearing its second crop of nuts this year; looks to have really good internal structure, with open cavity, but degree of fill on the nuts I’ve beaten the squirrels to leaves a lot to be desired.
Decent crop on Major, Kanza, Posey and Nacono pecans. Few to none on any other varieties here. Surprisingly, one of the Kanza trees appears to have had a moderate case of pecan scab (or some similar fungal malady) on nut husks.
Walked the creek a couple of weeks back… lots of shellbark hickories dropping nuts into the dry creekbed… went back and picked up a couple of 5-gal. bucketsful this afternoon… will de-husk them, dry/cure for a week or two, then crack to see which, if any are worth fooling with or tasty enough to expend the effort to crack out, even if not above average in ease 0f cracking.
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