Treasure find.....Black Walnut on my property

Good Evening,

I am so excited. My husband and I just found a HUGE black walnut tree on our property this evening. We've lived here almost 10 years and have over 100 edibles on our property. How did we miss this one? It is on the creek and huge. We always assumed it was another of the huge oak trees we have. We have a yard service that mows and thick grass so the nuts are always buried under the grass after they fall. I noticed the nuts a couple of years ago, but the tree is so large and looks similar to our oak trees so I didn't investigate any further. I assumed the nuts had been dropped by an animal or something. Anyway, it's embarassing that it took us so long to "find" it, but I am thrilled with my new discovery. It is absolutely LOADED with nuts!

Blessings,

Kelly

Like a little (or big) miracle hiding, just waiting for you! How cool!

Kelly, You'll probably start looking at all the black walnut recipes.. A couple of my favorite ways to use them are in brownies and banana bread.

Do you have much experience in processing them?

Hi KathyJo,

I don't have any experience in processing them. My husband took several into his shop and opened them with a vice. We tried our nut cracker, but it bent it! I'm going to have to do some research and find out how and/or when the green husk (or whatever it is) comes off.

The tree is absolutely loaded with nuts, so I am anxious to find out when I can get into them.

Have a great evening.

mom,

I've written this so many times, I need to convert it to a Word document so I can copy & paste, but here goes....

The first nuts dropped by the BW trees are often "blanks" - unfilled or poorly filled nuts, but when the main crop begins dropping, they're usually quite well-filled.
You really need to remove the husk material before it gets black and mushy, as it can penetrate the nutshell and cause discoloration of the nutmeat as well as conferring a somewhat bitter flavor to the kernel.
I dump freshly collected nuts in my gravel driveway and drive over them for a few days to loosen the husks - you can then manually remove remaining husk material - but wear gloves if you don't want your hands/fingers stained. Or, you can roll the nuts under your booted foot on a hard surface to remove the husks, run them through an old hand-cranked corn-sheller, or pound them through an appropriately-sized hole in a sturdy board(but wear old clothes and a full face-shield if you do it this way, or you'll be 'freckled' with indelible walnut stain).
Once you've removed the bulk of the husk material, place your nuts in a bucket of water and stir briskly with a stick, changing the water until it no longer comes off looking like strong black coffee. I have friends who use a cement-mixer, with a few chunks of rock/brick pitched in with their walnuts to wash & remove the remainder of the husk material.
At this time, you can also 'float' test your nuts - most incompletely-filled nuts will float, and should be discarded, while well-filled nuts will sink. Crack a few floaters, though, just to make sure they're no good - some really thin-shelled selections tend to float, and you don't want to throw away your best nuts!
Once your nuts are clean, spread them in a cool, dry place to 'cure' for at least a couple of weeks - straight off the tree, they're not tasty.
There are a number of good walnut crackers on the market, but I just use a simple bench-mounted vise(though I'm planning to buy a "Mr. Hick'ry" Nutcracker this year).
If you'll soak your nuts in warm water for an hour or so prior to beginning a cracking session, you'll find that the shell will tend to buckle and split rather than 'exploding' once you reach 'critical pressure' - you'll get more intact quarters and fewer tiny pieces, as well as fewer 'extra-crunchy surprises"(chunks of shell). A pair of diagonal wire-cutting pliers and a nut pick are handy for snipping shell here and there to release quarters and larger pieces.
It'll take a little bit of experimenting to determine what orientation you need to place your nuts in when putting pressure on with cracker or vise - some crack best end-to-end, others across the middle, etc.

More info at the NNGA website - http://www.northernnutgrowers.org

Happy cracking

If your tree is loaded with nuts then that must mean there is a pollinator nearby. I didn't even know that black walnuts would grow in south Florida.

I have hulled bushels of black walnuts. The best way is to do it while the hulls are still green. I used my heavy work shoes to stomp on them and then immediately pick the loose hulls off with a good quality pair of rubber gloves. I then poured them immediately on a large hardware screen enclosed by a frame and then squirted them with a garden hose....boy that sap brings the earthworms up for air!!. I let them dry a few hours in the sun and wind and then take them indoors for 2 weeks of spread out drying...a must to keep from molding. Then store them in egg baskets for a while more.

Some trees produce a small nut with a tight and thin hull in some years for various reasons. These are very difficult to process.

my hubby wants one of these. he wants edibles now and loves walnuts. me i am a cashew person. hehe

do you know where to buy any from?? i have never even seen a black walnut so i am clueless. thanks Marie

imzadi - get ready to wait a long time. It will take 20 + years for a Black Walnut to produce nuts. But you can grow English walnuts and filberts with no problem - and I'm sure you've got pecans there.

There's a reason walnut wood is so expensive - it takes forever to grow it.

I have to ask my grandmother. There was a huge black walnut right next to the house, I remember eating them by using a sturdy nut cracker. The thing is I remember them being brown when we eat them. They do stain because I remember ending up with black feet once and a while. I'll have to ask her when they collected them and all that. She's 86 so I don't know if she remembers this. They had every field divided by fruit and nut trees, it was a working farm for 100 or so years. About every inch was planted for a reason, about 500 hundred acres all together. She also was into raising birds. Everything from ducks to exotics. Grandfather died a long time ago BTW.

Grafted black walnuts will often begin bearing nuts within 3-5 years. Even seedling BWs often come into bearing within 10-12 years - or at least, they do here.
Named selections, like Emma Kay, Thomas Myers & Clermont have kernel percentages in the 35-40% range - two to three times the amount in most 'wild-type' BWs - and thinner shells, as well.
'Pounds #2' BW produced nuts with 55% kernel-to-shell ratio last year.
'Neel #1' BW is perhaps the best 'dessert-quality' BW yet discovered.

THE best source for grafted black walnut cultivars is Nolin River Nut Tree Nursery - http://www.nolinnursery.com
The folks at NRNTN should be able to tell you which cultivar(s) would be most likely to do well for you in a zone 8 setting.
Stark Bros. offers some grafted BWs - Kwik Krop would be my pick of their offerings; Thomas was the first BW variety selected & named for propagation, but there are others that are far better.
http://www.starkbros.com/access?action=product&productID=3644&collection=0

Here's a good article on the more productive BW selections:
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1990/v1-327.html

great day i thought wisteria was long from seed wow. he probably wont get one then. hehe i will try the links above.

gosh i guess the good things are worth the wait though.

I am starting to harvest my black walnuts here.. How is everyone else doing with theirs?

My single tree here in Ontario, just north of the Great Lakes, is bearing this year. The nuts are too high to harvest, so I'll just hope to gather them as they fall. The animals will probably get them before I do.

How is anyone else doing with their black walnuts? I don't need anymore this year and I am picking up buckets of them to dump in the woods. There is the heaviest crop of nuts I have about ever seen and this means they are smaller than usual.

Asked my grandmother and she said they never eat them. Sorry I'm of no use. LOL.

This is good information... not worth the effort. If I get a few nuts and can open them, OK; otherwise, I'm not treating the tree as a food source. It does have a nice shape.

What? no squirrels to help with the nuts?

Hi, I have been trying to plant different trees that produce fruit and nuts. I had bought three walnut trees, and just before they had arrived, I found out that because they produce a chemical called juglone, that they are not compatible with some other trees and vegetables. As a result, I planted them at the far end of my property and they did not get their share of water which possibly killed them, but more likely the time I carried several buckets of water to each one probably drowned them. Anyway, I just thought I would share some links. Take care, Mike http://www.walnutcouncil.org/botanical_description.htm http://www.americasbestflowers.com/perennials/walnut_tolerant_%20plant.htm

I absolutely love my walnut trees. I love harvesting the nuts, cracking them and sharing the bounty..

Yes, They are especially wicked on other plant varieties that you want to grow close to them, especially anything in the snakeroot family ( tomatoes, peppers, potatoes.) I guess I will just grow that stuff somewhere else.

One horticulturist told my that the only things that will grow very well under a walnut tree are plants with horizontal veins. -- grasses, daylilies, iris ( you get my drift.)

Think I'll go out and pick some more up.