8. Things to Know Before Falling in Love with
Nuts
• Your site characteristics
• Soil-test it!
• Water
• Climate
• Micro-climate
• Your own characteristics i.e. your context
• Financial
• Existing and needed skills/knowledge
• Do all of your decision makers agree?
• Does the nut species excite you? Including the non romantic aspects?
• Regrarian Platform-Darren Doherty
12. General Tips for All Species
• Visit people already growing nuts
• Yes, that includes conventional nut growers
• Get info from as many sources and perspectives as possible
• Learn to like reading academic papers
• Observe and interact with nut trees as much as you can
• Don’t under estimate grass and deer
• Join Northern Nut Growers Association
• Eat nuts!
13. Cultivars VS Seedlings
• Destroy Dichotomy!
• Cultivars:
• Predictable characteristics
• Yield
• Quality
• Disease resistance
• Uniform ripening time
• Grafted or clonal plants more expensive
• Often in short or no supply depending on species and variety
14. Cultivar VS Seedling
• Seedlings:
• Opportunity for selecting better varieties
• Cheaper to buy and/or propagate
• Can be used as rootstock if it sucks
• Not applicable to every species
• Often more vigorous growers
• Ripening time spread out
• Diversity also includes negative characteristics!
15. Cultivars VS Seedlings
• Choosing Seedlings
• Use seedlings of proven cultivars*Especially important for chestnut if you
want to graft*
• If you know it was pollinated by other good cultivars, even better
• Seedlings of good, non-cultivar plants
• Look at what the other trees in the planting are like
• Is this a commercial planting? Does the owner actually depend on nut production?
• Avoid buying run-of-the-mill seedlings, especially from large nurseries
• Applies to rootstock too
16. Chestnuts
• Castanea
• C. mollissima and hybrids
• C. crenata X C. sativa
• Wouldn’t recommend pure C. dentata due to blight.
• Soil characteristics are important for chestnut!
• Acidic soil 4-6.5
• Well drained
• Best to use seedlings of desired plant as rootstock
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19. Varieties
• C. mollissima
• Mossbarger
• Luvall’s Monster
• Sleeping Giant
• Lockwood
• Qing
• Gideon
• Gellatly hybrids with isolation from Chinese
• Complex hybrids
20. Varieties
• C. crenata X C. sativa-for trial only zone 4 and 5!
• Szego-Actually mollissima X sativa
• Maraval
• Marsol
• Marigoule
• Bouche de Betizac
21. Farm or Homestead?
• Both! As long as your site fits its needs
• Commercial production will require transportation or proximity to
population centers
• Immigrants from chestnut cultures like chestnuts
• Main advantage is that it doesn’t need shelling
22. Walnuts
• Juglans regia- Eurasian walnut, “English”, “Persian”, “Carpathian”
• Juglans nigra-Black walnut
• Juglans cinerea-Butternut
• Juglans ailantifolia-Heartnut
• Hybrids of above, especially butternut and heartnut AKA Buartnut
23. Juglans regia
• What nut growers dreams are made of
• Then what their nightmares are made of
• Compared to other walnut species it lacks hardiness and disease/pest
resistance
• Walnut blight
• Butternut Curculio
• Usually grafted on black walnut with few incompatibility issues
• Thousand Canker disease could change this
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31. Juglans regia
• Varieties
• Papple
• Combe
• Lake
• ISU 73H32
• Harrison
• Broadview-from Gellatly via Ukraine. Produces pendulous fruit like heartnut
• Sejnovo
• Dooley 69-E-(nigraXregia) X regia
• Idaho-regia X nigra
32. Juglans regia
• Characteristics to look for
• Lateral bearing
• Short, stocky shoots that harden quickly
• Not just hardy wood but hardy flower buds, especially male
• Don’t confuse blight or curculio damage for lack of hardiness
• Healthy foliage
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34. Juglans nigra
• Native walnut species
• Thick, hard shell
• Strong tasting nut meats disliked by some
• High value timber
• Thousand Canker disease
• Grafted on same species
36. Juglans nigra
• Things to look for in a good tree
• Adapted to your climate
• Leafs out late
• Matures nuts before frost
• Hardens off early
• % kernel and shell structure more important than nut size
• 25-30% kernel
• Disease resistance
• Anthracnose
• Thousand canker disease?
37. Juglans nigra
• Farm or homestead?
• If close enough to a processing facility it can make a good farm crop
38. Juglans cinerea
• Native walnut species with elongated nuts, now found primarily in
early succession ecosystems
• Population devastated by butternut canker
• Often grafted on black walnut or butternut. Buartnut would make a
lot of sense
39. Juglans cinerea
• Varieties-
• Any local tree that’s alive!
• Buartnuts selected for butternut characteristics- “Butter-buarts”
40. Juglans cinerea
• Farm or homestead
• Little prospect as a commercial crop due to butternut canker and poor
cracking characteristics.
41. Juglans ailantifolia
• East Asian species with some trees having butternut type nuts and
some having the heart shaped nuts
• Seems well adapted to Upper-Midwest conditions zone 5 and up
• Bunch disease only potential issue
• Often grafted on black walnut but can out grow stock
• Suggest grafting on buartnut seedlings for hardiness, disease resistance, and
vigor
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45. Juglans ailantifolia
• Varieties:
• Etter
• Campbell CW3-seedling of Etter. Late bloom and cold hardy. Said to be side bearing
• CW1
• CWW
• Campbell’s West
• Imshu
• Pyke
• Blunt-cold hardy from Manchurian walnut genes
• Locket
• Stealth
• Szukis
46. Juglans ailantifolia
• Buartnut varieties with heart like nuts
• Mitchell-Thought to be most hardy
• Dooley
• Filzinger
• Miekal’s buartnuts
47. Juglans ailantifolia
• Farm or homestead
• Farm?
• Needs cracking, easier to do small scale but still time consuming
51. Carya ovata
• Good nut should give at least 50% whole halves
• At least 85 nuts per pound
• Size is less important than internal shell structure
52. Carya ovata
• Farm or homestead?
• Homestead
• Farm possibilities with a shelling facility
53. Carya cordiformis
• Native hickory, faster growth than shagbark and more precocious
• Very similar to pecan
• Bitternut with high tannin
• High oil content
• Useful for breeding purposes
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55. Carya cordiformis
• Varieties
• Halesite-sweet bitternut
• Hatch-sweet bitternut
• Abbott-cross with pecan
• Galloway-cross with pecan
• Mall-cross with pecan
• Nelson-cross with pecan
• Pooshee-cross with pecan
• Westbrook-cross with pecan
56. Carya cordiformis
• Farm or homestead?
• Potential for income from pure bitternut for oil. More viable wild collected
• Potential for bitternut X pecan but more breeding work needed
57. Carya illinoinensis
• Closest native range is the border of Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota
• Hardiness not as much of a problem as length of season
• Need to drop nuts before hard frost
• “Northern” pecan works in southern Illinois, northern Missouri,
Kentucky. Need “Ultra-northern” for upper-midwest
• Issues with scab in susceptible varieties
61. Carya illinoinensis
• Northern varieties for breeding purposes or warm years
• Posey-fair resistance to scab
• Starking
• Witte
• Major-Scab resistance
• Hark-scab resistance
• Shepard-Scab resistance
• Warren 346-scab resistance
• Kansas state varieties
• Kanza-scab resistant
• Lakota
• Osage
• Oswego
62. Carya illinoinensis
• Farm or homestead?
• Ultra northern pecans are too small to compete with southern production.
Potential as an oil crop?
• Northern pecan could be grown as pollen source for breeding with ultra
northern or other hickory species
63. Carya laciniosa
• Shellbark hickory native to southern part of Midwest and up the
Mississippi to around Iowa City
• Large nut, biggest of hickory
• Tends to be more of a mesic species than either shagbark or pecan
• Takes a lot of heat to ripen nuts
• Lots of “packing material” and convoluted shell structure
65. Carya laciniosa
• Farm or homestead?
• Neither except for homestead trial. Gary Fernald says he thinks that there
could be varieties that ripen in Zone 5 Wisconsin
67. Corylus spp.
• Long history of breeding and attempted industry in Wisconsin
• Euro hazelnut has cold hardiness and disease issues
• American hazelnut tends to have small nuts
• Hybrids are seen as the solution
• Selection for Euro characteristics can lead to disease problems
• Selection for disease resistance can lead to more American characteristics
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71. Corylus spp.
• Varieties-
• Tom Molnar breeding pure C. avellana for disease resistance and cold
hardiness
• Midwest hazels-hybrids of american and European
• Clonal selections being made and trialed. Few available but starting
• Controlled crosses available and being trialed
• John Gordon varieties collected by Molnar
• Gordon 1-4
• Contact Tom Molnar for scionwood
• Could be used as reference cultivars
72. Corylus spp.
• Farm or Homestead?
• Farm? Genetic improvements are happening but processing industry is in its
infancy
• Homestead use for sure
73. Suggested Reading
• NNGA Newsletters
• A Guide to Nut Tree Culture-Editor Dennis Fulbright
• Nut Tree Culture in North America-Editor Richard Jaynes
• Nut Tree Ontario- Ernie Grimo
• Nut Growing Ontario Style-John Gordon available online
http://johnsankey.ca/songnews/nutgrowing.html
• Growing Nuts in the North-Carl Weschcke also available online
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18189
• Growing Hybrid Hazelnuts-Philip Rutter et. all
74. Suggested Reading
• NAFEX
• Upper-Midwest Hazelnut Development Initiative (UMHDI)
• Chestnut Growers of America
• University of Missouri School of Agroforestry
• Nut Competitions