Nuts

On my old blog a follower had asked me about my nut trees.

When I had written the posts in my old blog
 http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/
I had planted a lot of different kinds of nut trees. One of the followers on the old site asked me if they had all survived. Nope. I lost the Halls Hardy Almond Tree and the 2 Hickory nut trees, and all of the Hardy Pecan trees. One of the sweet Chestnuts lived but one died. Last year I planted 2 more baby sweet Chestnuts (as you have to have two for pollination).

However all of the other nut trees I planted have survived and are doing well. I still have the one sweet Chestnut, so it has a long head start on the babies I planted last year. I had planted several black Walnut trees and at least 2 of those are still alive, more may be as I put a lot of little whips of seedlings in the woods and not sure if they made it. I also have a Carpathian Walnut, a Butternut and at least 2 of my baby Heartnuts are alive. Those are all FORMS of Walnuts, so they carry the alleopathic secretions of Juglone which limit the plants that can grow near them. I explained that in an earlier post.

I also started out with 6 hazelnut trees many years ago in a row, well they spread, and our neighbors planted 2 in their yard as well. Now I have a large hedge of hazelnuts and the above photos are from hazelnuts we picked off of them in 2017. Last year the critters beat us to the harvest so who knows what hollow log that harvest ended up in, but not in our cupboards.

We have several wild plums at the end of the hazelnut hedge on the west, and a mulberry in the hedge as well, the plums began producing large amounts of fruit last fall for the first time we've noticed fruit on them, and they were beautiful and delicious.

I do have a desire to plant more nut trees, but I'm going to be 68 this year and nut trees take a long time to grow to harvest size, and not getting any younger it might be futile to plant them now?

I probably will however dig up some babies or plant some nuts from the hazelnuts in other areas on the property, as they are fast growers and provide a reliable supply of protein. Protein plants are hard to come by that don't have to be replanted each year, so it is nice to have enough of them so that if the critters get some of your crop, there will be some left for you. I have enough land and room for more hazelnuts and they like it here, so I think that will be a project for this spring.