Stealing from Squirrels: Harvesting Black Walnuts

Today's harvest

We moved into a house on a one-acre plot of land and were lucky enough to inherit five full-grown black walnut trees. Our first  year here, we didn't realize our fortune and probably just complained about the slipperiness over which we had to mow in the fall. I remember almost falling with the lawn mower more than once! The next summer, our longtime friend Jack pointed out that we had ourselves some monstrous black walnut trees. Our inner hunter-gather selves sparked with curiosity. We had to wait for the following fall, as black walnut trees produce a ton of fruit every other year. So, wait we did. The following year, we picked a few buckets and let them sit on the porch. Carried away with other gardening endeavors, work, and being social, we ended up providing squirrels with some easy dining that winter, but didn't try any ourselves.

Today, we finally, finally made the Gatherer part of our psyche deliriously giddy! We spent the day collecting, hulling, and washing black walnuts. I started off with a pair of gardening gloves - not a good idea.

Tomorrow, my students will be wondering if I have touched a horcrux like the late Dumbledore. I guess the dye doesn't come off of your skin for quite some time, so instead of toting a "green thumb", I'll be showing off my brown one. Luckily, I discovered the black walnut juices were seeping through early enough in the process that it is not as bad as it could be. I replaced them with yellow, plastic cleaning gloves after about 5 of the walnuts.

We learned a few tidbits during our research today:
1. You don't have to wait until black walnuts are black to harvest them. In fact, pick them when they're green. They're much less likely to be filled with little white maggoty-looking worms.
2. You don't have to stuff them into a bag and then back over them with your car. In fact, several walnut experts report that doing that equals danger. Walnut pieces could bust off, break windows, hit animals, and so on. No good. Through trial and error, we found the best way to hull them is to stomp on them with the heel of your shoe, and then peel the green husk off. The stomping sped up the process quite a bit.

The pretty peach inside quickly turns black once the air hits.

3. You have to rinse them off - but they won't come completely clean. Get what you can off without completely stressing yourself out.

4. The walnuts have to cure for about 2 weeks before you can take the nut shells off.
5. The black walnut juice/dye is toxic to dogs and VERY toxic to horses. Keep your canine friends on a short leash or in the house when doing the dirty work.

Franklin expressing his non-gratitude re. the short leash

So, for now, we're waiting...we might harvest some more in the meantime. I never realized how many "walnut" foods I loved until I began this whole walnut fiasco this morning. I'm anxiously awaiting making homemade walnut burgers. Andy can't wait to make chocolate chip walnut cookies. And tonight I read about black walnut ice cream.

Brown fingers and all, I think I am foreseeing myself back out in the yard tomorrow, picking some more. Poor squirrels. I almost feel guilty. I guess I'll leave them all of the cracked ones. That should be good enough, right?

Fruit Tree Planting

We've enjoyed the early spring by cleaning up a neglected part of our yard. Overgrown long before we moved in, about a 1/4 of our yard is now ready to become a mini-orchard. Several mulberry trees are scattered throughout this space, and today, we added two pear trees and two apple trees.

Our fruit-tree-planting experience was next to zilch, so throughout this process we've learned quite a bit. One important piece of information which we acquired was that both pear and apple trees need cross pollination to produce fruit.  Put simply, an apple tree variety needs a partner of a different variety in order to cross-pollinate. For example, we bought a Honeycrisp apple tree; in order for this tree to thrive and produce fruit, it needs another  apple tree variety, so we also bought a Wolf River apple tree. As for the pears, we purchased and planted a Karl's Favorite pear tree and a Ubileen pear tree. Insects and bees will accomplish the cross pollination if the trees are planted close enough to each other. We planted both our pair of apple trees and our pair of pear trees 15 feet apart from one another.

We bought our trees in bareroot form, meaning that the roots are exposed and not bound in soil. We arrived home from Jung's Garden Store with a plastic bag of these four trees, and then decided we had better figure out how to plant them.

So, how does one plant a fruit tree? We did some reading and research, which gave us a wealth of information. The following lists some of what we found out and the steps we took in order to give our new trees a strong start to life and a future of fruit-bearing! 
1. Bareroots  need to soak in a root stimulator in water for 12-24 hours. We just soaked ours overnight.

2. Fruit trees like a well-drained, sandy soil. To assist in water drainage, we added a layer of pea gravel before placing each tree in the ground. Our soil is very thick and clay-like, so we added peat and sand to the existing soil and covered the tree roots with that mixture.

3. After planting the tree, it needs immediate water (around 3 gallons). Ours received 2 gallons each immediately following planting. We are to receive rain all week, so our trees will be getting plenty! 

4. Young trees need to be staked to provide stability.

We also learned that young trees need to be pruned in order to prevent moisture stress, which is what happens when there are not enough roots to get sufficient water to the very tops of the trees. Learning this was a bit disappointing! The young trees look so robust and proud in the yard; I hate to see them losing height and branches, but what's needed is needed, I guess. The pruning will happen tomorrow as we got rained out today.

Honeycrisp Tree

Wolf River Tree

Karl's Favorite Pear Tree

Ubileen Pear Dwarf Tree