Hi All, I'm new to gardening and thought I'd share my first "hard lesson" learned, and maybe help some other "newbie".
From other postings I made, I found out that the beautiful Black Walnut tree in my yard can, simply put, kill many plants. The tree, leaves, nuts, roots etc. contain JUGLONE and are toxic to many plants.
I guess this is pretty well known, but being a newbie to gardening I just wasted 8 months composting these leaves which just can't be used. I covered all my beds with the leaves, and even used some of the compost as I was planting my new gardens. How sad. I may lose a few brand new rhodies.
There is plenty of easy to find info on the web about black walnuts and plants that are tolerant and NOT tolerant to juglone. Just do a "google" search of juglone and you'll learn more than you need to know.
Leaf Mold - Walnut Warning
a lot of plants have their own growth inhibitors
sunflowers I read once do and rhodies themselves
and walnuts to name a few
Hi! I was intrigued by your post, since I had just read that walnut leaves can be composted and made usable --depending on how they are composted and on which plants you use it on. If you composted them for 8 months, they just might be safe for most purposes and can apparently be tested with tomato seedlings! I was looking at the Ohio State Extension website in particular (see http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/1000/1148.html) --I was hoping that might be a *small* bit of good news. So sorry to hear about the rhodies.
Wow. I'm a newbie myself and I didn't know this at all. I was going to ask friends for their bagged leaves this fall so that I can spread them on clay soil and cover with straw for a composting effect and great worm food. I'll stay away from all Walnut tree leaves. Thanks for the post.
Wow, I just saw this. You might find this interesting. I work for a magazine publishing company. One of the advertising people got a phone call asking for someone's phone number for a medical reason. The contributor/photographer of one of the woodworking magazines wrote an article on walnut wood. He added in the last paragraph about how toxic walnut can be.
The man who called has been working with wood for years. He has just been diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer. The doctor ground up samples of all of the woods the man works with. He put them on the man's arms. The walnut made the skin erupt. So now it looks like it may not be cancer, but a reaction to the wood.
The article said to be very careful around the sawdust and keep it away from animals.
Hi: I just read your post and am very surprised to hear about the leaves of walnuts being toxic. I have a number of black walnuts in my yard and have mostly picked them up but some have certainly ended up in my compost with no problems. My understanding and research on the juglone is that it's in the tree roots and lots of things planted directly under the walnuts won't grow because of it. Last fall I put a new bed of iris on the grass in front of the biggest two walnuts and they did very well there. I'm planning to put an evergreen on the ground between two and will report on that. I save the walnuts for the winter critters and this year will be a bumper crop. Hope your rhododendrons pull through. They like a very acidic soil so I hope it's not the walnut tree.
Bobbe
I'm surrounded by 5 walnut trees. We rake them up, spread them on the garden and burn them. (I know people with asthma can't take the smoke, but they burn fast and I know all my neighbors.) I also live on the edge of town and can wait till the wind is blowing to the country side.