Hazel nuts in the husk.

Hazel nuts out of the husk. These are the biggest hazel nuts I have ever seen. I collected them less than 8 miles from my farm and hope to cold stratify and grow them here.

Heartnuts.

Heartnuts.

Butternuts.

Named cultivars of grafted black walnuts.

Buckeyes. Not an edible nut, but we sold a bunch last weekend for 50 cents each.

Black walnut/butternut/heartnut cross, given to me by another fan of nuts. They are are all species of walnuts and cross with English walnuts too.


Most of the nuts I harvested will be cold striated and grown next Spring.

Keith

Keith, what do people buy the buckeyes for?

Very good assortment. My grandpa always told me that only one side of the buckeye was toxic, but only squirrels knew which side. Eric

Ohio State fans are the biggest market in my area for buckeye nuts. I also sold some to people who wanted to grow them. I sold 2 to a girl who wanted to carry one in her pocket for luck. I sold them 2 for a dollar.

We had buckeye trees with us, but nobody bought any last weekend. We sold a few the weekend before for $15.00 each for little trees that sprouted in the Spring from the same parent trees the pictured nuts came from.

We are going to collect a bunch more buckeyes and Diane and my partner will make necklaces and other jewelry for Ohio State fans with them.

Keith

I'll collect several types of hickory nuts and purchase English walnuts and a few hundred pounds of hazelnuts too. I'll sell most for eating, but still grow a good amount.

I'm going to collect persimmons and hopefully some pawpaws too. We will make stuff with the fruit and grow the seeds.

Keith

Whatcha plan on making with your persimmons, Keith? Trees down here are pretty loaded this year I noticed.

Keith, what is the process for planting a buckeye? Do the seeds need stratisfied? I find myself in possession of a couple dozen buckeyes and the wife wants a tree.

We have a yellow buckeye tree in the yard....Those are neat trees.

The old timers used to keep a buckeye nut in their pocket for good luck.

We planted 3 persimmons this spring on the farm. Would really like some pawpaw seedlings to plant. Eric

I joined the Ohio Nut Growers Association back in the Spring. I had wanted to go to the meetings since 2021, but stuff always went wrong or came up. Many of the members grow persimmons and pawpaws too. Several of them sell half pints of persimmon pudding for $15.00. I want to make that to sell and eat. My partner makes persimmon and pumpkin pies. Diane will try making some other deserts with it, if I can get a lot.

I met a guy the weekend before last, who we sold trees to, who offered to let me collect persimmons and hickory nuts from his property. He's supposed to have large quantities of both.

ONGA gives away scions of named cultivars of many types of nuts, pawpaws and persimmons in the Spring. We have a few hundred persimmon trees left. I want to graft better varieties on a lot of the wild stock trees we have. There are some American/Asian persimmons that get large, that can handle the cold and that have more pulp then seed. Most American persimmons have more seeds than pulp.

Keith

Buckeyes do need cold stratified. The easiest way is to bury them about an inch deep in the ground and cover them with wire to prevent them from getting eaten by rodents. When the ground finally warms up well, usually in May, they pop up really quickly. As long as you don't let them dry out, most buckeyes will germinate. Last year, we planted the buckeyes within a few days of collection. We potted up some buckeye trees early to sell, but have most in air pruning beds, that we need to dig, once they go dormant. We have hundreds of apricot, peach, black walnut
, oak and persimmon trees to dig too.

Keith

We sold our last pawpaw trees the weekend before last. Our pawpaw trees were tiny and looked rough, but they still sold really well. They were so small we didn't take them to most of the events we sold at. We bought them from Hartman's Plant Nursery in Michigan back in the Spring. They have been out for a while now. I want to purchase 300 bare root pawpaws in the Spring from the Missouri Department of Conservation, but there website is still showing sold out from last Spring. I will plant as many pawpaw seeds as we can probably get.

Pawpaws frequently take 2 years, or even more to germinate. The seeds were made to pass through the digestive tracks of megafauna, like giant sloths, for stratification. The coating on pawpaw seeds is a laxative.

ONGA asked me to teach classes for them at an event they will do in 2027. I have to take 200 trees to the event to sell, which the host will pay me for. I can take orders for more at the event. It should be very profitable for me.

Everytime I teach classes and merchant at an event, sales have been phenomenal for me.

Keith

… you aught to be ashamed of the provocative thread title

Thank you for the info Keith.

You're welcome.

Keith

Chinese chestnuts I've picked up the last two days.

a very good read thanks Keith,

I went and got more horse chestnuts,

Keith keep posting more pictures we don't have any of the trees you're talking about up here that I'm aware of anyway .

This is interesting stuff ha ha !

These nuts...

How do you use the chestnuts?

I've had roasted chestnuts 3 times and never liked them. Last week, I ate a a small, raw, fresh chestnut at Farm Science Review, that was okay.

I got 3 small chestnut trees in trade, for 2 Hall's Cold Hardy almond trees at the Fall ONGA meeting, I need to plant.

The most valuable nut crop in Ohio right now is chestnuts. There's Route 9 Cooperative, which has at least 5 growers, with large acreage and another large grower just North of them, who sells his excess to them. They produce huge amounts of chestnuts. Most of their chestnuts are sold to Asian people. The demand is supposed to far exceed the supply. The Asians prefer medium sized chestnuts over the large and small. Some of the biggest chestnuts are over 3" across.

Keith

You should be able to at least grow hazelnuts where you are. They are extremely cold hardy. They were the first staple crop in Europe. They helped our ancestors survive when Europe was still not long out of the ice age.

Keith

Thanks Roy. I'll send your buckeyes next Monday.

Keith

That's like what Amanda and Diane will be making. Ohio State fans pay big money for necklaces like those. I would like to get some of those scarlet and gray beads for the necklaces. The beads add a lot to the buckeyes.

Keith

Call MDC @ 636-441-4554 for the newest tree catalog, out-of-staters welcome.

I picked up walnuts on my farm today. I mowed the edge of my hayfields I was going to collect from on Sunday. There were very few dropped walnuts. I walked down to a low area, with my Walnut Weasel and a 5 gallon bucket, collecting the relatively few scattered nuts, until I got to a tree that had probably dropped a third of it's load. Not wanting to carry around 80 pounds of walnuts back in buckets, I got my truck and a both parts of a 55 gallon barrel with a 1/3rd cut off it.







Keith

Keith,
we eat the chestnuts raw, roasted as far as I'm concerned are Terrible. The longer you keep them the sweeter they get. They start to dehydrate and shrink. We keep them refrigerated. This is mainly due to a grub that can grow inside of them. If you keep them at room temp over half will develope the grub. We'll still be eating ones that are refrigerated till the end of winter on a good harvest year.

I also picked two 5 gallon buckets of red oak acorns. My friend asked for them. Not sure of his intentions yet.

I heard that if you put the raw chestnuts in 115F to 120F water for 15 to 20 minutes it kills the chestnut grubs and doesn't alter the taste, or kills the chestnut embryo, if you want to grow it. I've never tried it because I don't have chestnuts.

Oak trees, especially burr and white oak, sell really well. Red oak sells less well, at least around here. The burr oaks are very popular with deer hunters who plant food plots.

I need to buy the smaller nut weasel for acorns, small hickory nuts and hazelnuts.

Keith

Keith, I did put the chestnuts in the hot water one year following directions I found. It still gave them that "roasted" texture that I didn't like. It was worth a try. I've found refrigeration to be the best for me. Also, picking them every day as they fall so the nut never gets a chance to be too warm too long.
Might go pick up some walnuts Thursday, not a large crop around me on most trees. Was really wanting to make and concentrate some walnut trap dye for next years prep work.

Chestnuts are an acquired taste,... one that I never acquired, lol
They're very popular around Christmas with Italians, at least the old school ones. Mostly roasted, there used to be a pretty good demand in NYC with roasted ones from street vendors, I don't know if it still is, I don't go there, lol

Here is some swamper hickory nuts I knocked off when I cut a dead ash. Quarter for size comparison.

Those look like some very nice shellbark hickory nuts.

Keith

You asked for it……

I started hulling nuts yesterday evening, both heartnuts and black walnuts. Here's some heartnuts.



Keith

I am not familiar with heart nuts. What do you do with them?

Heartnuts are a sport of the Asian walnut that has a heart shaped shell and heart shaped nut meat, that easily comes out in one piece, in the named cultivars. A lot of people call them Japanese walnuts. They open like a locket. A single light tap on the side is usually sufficient to open them in two perfect, heart shaped pieces. They are a mild flavored walnut, that tastes a little bit like a macadamia nut.

Heartnuts produce nuts from seed in 3 years. They can hybridize with black walnuts, butternuts and English walnuts. The next generation can be very variable. Most butternuts, that survived the blight, have heartnut genetics now.

The heart shaped nut meats sell really well and the half shells are often used for crafts. The shells are sometimes crushed and used for giving traction to snow tires, like metal studs are.



Keith