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 stratified 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 their 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

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

Nice Keith, I've never seen those before

The heartnuts, because of the shape, make beautiful dessert toppings. They make heart shaped chocolate molds that you can insert a heartnut meat in before filling them with chocolate. The nuts fill out the chocolates well.

If I can afford it in the Spring, I want to purchase some larger, grafted, select cultivars of heart nuts, that are a few years old. If I can't, I'll graft select cultivars on black walnuts saplings I grew from seed this year. It will just take 2 or 3 years longer to get nuts.

Keith

Walnut’s haven’t started dropping here yet but I’m sure it’s close.

If you don't want to hull your black walnuts yourself, places buying for Hammons charge 13 cents a pound after hulling weight or half the walnuts you bring in.

This year Hammons is paying 13 cents per pound for walnuts, after they hull them.

You can find the walnut buying stations here:

https://black-walnuts.com/discover-harvesting-and-hulling/hulling-and-buying-locations/

I just talked to Joe Hietter, who runs one of the walnut hulling stations in Pataskala, near Columbus, Ohio and who is in ONGA, earlier tonight.

Keith

Where are heartnut trees sold? I've never seen them anywhere I buy trees from....

Grimo is probably the most respected heartnut tree source for named varieties.

https://www.grimonut.com/index.php?p=Products&category=heartnut

Grimo has around a dozen different varieties of heartnut trees for sale. The growers I know in Ohio, mostly bought their original stock from Grimo and then grafted scions from those trees on black walnut or heartnut saplings started from seed.

I'm going to pot up a bunch of black walnut saplings I grew from seed this year, after they go dormant and then graft heartnut on them in the Spring.

I'm going to plant several hundred heartnut seeds this fall too. They may be crossed with black and English walnut. I'll graft onto some the following year, but will let some grow to see what they produce too.



Keith

Keith, I was making some trap dye this a.m.
Noticed lots of maggot/grubs in the walnuts.
The more decayed they were the more chance of grubs.
Any idea what they are?

walnut husk fly (Rhagoletis completa)

Thank you

so to get a tree to grow from the nut[seed] do you dry the nut and then put it into fridge,?

You don't want to dry the nuts out more than minimally, or you can kill them. Nuts like chestnuts, buckeyes and acorns are easy to over dry and kill. Cold stratification in the refrigerator works well in slightly damp, not dripping, peat moss, vermiculite or sand. Even a damp paper towel can work. It can take up to 120 days. Because of space constraints, I cold stratify most seeds and nuts outside.

Keith

The walnut husk flies don't harm the nut meat in the black walnuts. They don't get inside the actual nut. They just wash off when you clean the husk off the shell.

Keith

These rocks are what I use for hulling black walnuts and heartnuts. Black walnuts usually take 2 or 3 hits. Heart nuts usually only take 1 hit. These rocks came from where the Native American camp was on my farm and were likely used for the same purpose. I am more sure of the anvil stone than the hammer stone.




I have 3 barrels of black walnut seedlings, I planted last Winter, that I plan on grafting named varieties of heart nuts and black walnuts on. I'll dig them and pot them up after they go dormant.



Keith

I really hope Vinke doesn't notice this thread.

He already did, go back a few posts........if you dare!!!

so, you put the nuts, in the barrels, in the fall, and they came up in the spring, and you will plant them this fall,

Yes, I'll dig them out when they go dormant, trim them back a lot, but not all the way and put them in pots. Roots grow most in the Fall and Winter. In the Spring, I'll cut them back to a few inches tall and graft pieces of heartnut and named cultivars of black walnut, with characteristics like more nut meat and thinner shells, to them. I'll then baby them until next Fall, when I'll plant them in my hayfields. I'll likely sell some too.

Not all the grafts will likely take, so I'll make many more than I think I need. I won't put them in the fields right away, because the new grafts need a lot of care and it's easier to keep them together near water. Just a bird landing on a new graft, before it fully heals and grows, can break it off. A lot of people that do put them directly in the field, tape on a piece to the trunk, that sticks up higher than the graft, for the birds to land on.

I'm hoping their roots didn't get to long. If they did get to long, I'll have to buy deeper tree pots. I think the tallest I have are 11 inches. Most of what we planted we put in air pruning beds. Air pruning beds have wire on the bottom, above an air pocket. The tap roots pause when they hit air and lots of lateral roots progressively form and pause too. It keeps the roots shorter and more manageable. It also makes many more roots.

I have a bunch of cold hardy pecan, shell bark hickory and apricot trees, which we will graft onto too. I'll put named cultivars on them too. The apricots will get peaches and nectarines grafted to them.

Keith

Here's some of what we sell on weekends, that I took pictures of as I was unloading yesterday.


Amorphophallus konjack, AKA voodoo lilies. They are by far our best seller.



Elephant ears.


Cold hardy apricot.


Cold hardy pecan.


Shellbark hickory.


White oak.


Redbud.


Buckeye


Persimmon


Canna lilies.


Earlier in the year and still for some, we also sold/sell lots of types of tomato plants, peppers, eggplants, herbs, annual flowers, perennial native flowers, serviceberry, pawpaw, catnip, spearmint, coleus, spider plants, elderberry and Easter lilies. Next year we will have a lot more.

Keith

To stratify walnuts you can always heal an onion bag of nuts in a small gravel pile. Works like a charm. Just don't forget about them like this batch from the late 80's in from of my cabin!



Incidentally, these came from Lagerstedt's "walnut wilderness" near Corvallis, Oregon back when I was still an NNGA member (Northern Nut Grower Assoc.) These were nuts collected form a timber variety with purple heartwood and likely pollinated with nut varieties planted all around it. Harry Lagerstedt was a long time NNGA member and USDA horticulturist. He is accredited with the "Ennis" variety of hazelnut among many other innovations in the nut and fruit world.

Keith, you ever do any grafting of pecan scionwood onto hickory rootstock?

I have not. Pecan is a type of hickory, but grows faster than trees like shellbark hickory. I've seen pictures and videos of when it's been done and the pecan bulges out weirdly above the graft. It can make for a weak, unsightly tree. I would graft the pecan variety you want on pecan root stock.

A lot of grafted nut trees look very different from between the rootstock and the graft, often because of major differences in bark texture.

Hickory scions perform more quickly if put on a pecan root stock. They get nuts much more quickly.

Hican scions do better on pecan root stock too. Hicans are crosses between shellbark hickories and pecans. They can get significantly bigger nuts than both parents. Some hican nuts are so big you can only hold 3 or 4 in your hand.

Keith

I've still been gathering nuts a few times a week.

These are all selected, named varieties of black walnuts, I collected today. The large nuts in the grey bucket and roller are Hare, a large easy to crack nut. The smaller looking nuts are Hay, a thin husked, thin shelled large nut. I'll plant many of these nuts. Both trees are self fertile, but they may not grow true to seed, because they can be pollinated by trees that are up to 250 feet away. I'm hoping they are all better than most wild nuts.



These are button bush seeds I collected last week. I'll plant them, but also plant cuttings in the Spring, which will reach saleable size more quickly.



Has anybody else been collecting any nuts or other seeds?

Keith

I don't believe you picked any of those nuts.

It tried bud but I just couldnt get the camera far enough to get everything in the photo.

That's a large heavy nut. I found one like that under an overpass, in a creek I used to catch minnows out of. What size bolt does it fit on?

Keith

Iirc, it’s for a 2 1/4 or 2 1/2 inch bolt.. I used to make studs that were 12” long and threaded on both ends, it went into a big metal shear at our local scrap iron dealer..

This is how I clean my nuts.

I put the hulled nuts in a 5 gallon bucket of water on a paint/mud stirrer.



I let it run for around 10 minutes to loosen and knock off the fibrous debris on the nuts.



I pour the nuts in a milk crate, that sits on a barrel top, with a big hole cut in it. I then rinse them to wash away the debris.



There's still a fair amount of fiber on the nuts. I float test them by adding water. I pull out the floaters. They aren't good for planting, but are often good to eat still.



I then repeat the process. The nuts don't need to be perfectly clean, pretty clean is good enough. Black walnuts ready for drying.




Heartnuts ready for drying.



Keith

The initial drying of the nuts starts outside. It will go until about dark. The rest of the drying will be inside, to avoid rodents and sun damage.



The hulls have juglone in them, which is toxic to many plants. Walnut use juglone to reduce competition. Juglone quickly breaks down when composted. The composted hulls are extremely high in useable nitrogen, which plants need to survive. The hulls will get covered with raw poultry manure. The next level will be rabbit manure. The top level will be soil, from already composted material, which I will plant in.




Keith

Usually I grill with the nut shells. I found another good use.




Keith

Using shotgun shells as a size reference.... Yep, I am among my people.

I picked up 8 gallons of buartnuts today and smaller amounts of black walnuts, heartnuts, shellbark hickory nuts, hazelnuts and pecans. Yesterday, I started mowing under my black walnut trees, to make collection easier as the nuts will start to drop soon.

I also picked 20 gallons of apples, some Summer pears, spearmint, self-heal/heal-all/woundwort, peppermint, catnip and iron wood seed.

Has anyone else been collecting any nuts, or anything else?

Keith

The squirrels are cutting the hickory nuts now. I have not picked up any yet but will once it cools off a bit.

Just finished up with several large catnip plants a few days ago. Got them trimmed and bundled up to dry. They are on our 2nd floor where it is quite warm this time of year.

Buckeyes are going nuts this year. They are yuge.

Juglans mandshurica, the Manchurian walnut, has nuts my that look similar to a buartnut, but which are smaller. People use them in landscaping because they are less allelopathic than other walnuts.

Those hazelnuts may be good to eat still. Usually they are good for at least 3 years.

This year, I had a decent crop of hazelnuts, but the deer took almost all of them in one night.

Keith

A lot of times the bigger husks will hold multiple buckeyes.

Keith

The buartnuts, plus a few black walnuts and heart nuts.





Remembrance elderberries. These were dried and will go into a Wellness tea blend my partner makes.



Some of my apples. I've picked around 100 gallons so far for apple sauce, apple butter, apple jelly, pepper jelly and dried apples. Others will go into canned apples for pie filling.




As early as it is, there were remarkably few floaters out of the nuts. I got a little over 2 gallons of clean nuts and only 3 buartnuts, 2 heartnuts and 5 black walnuts failed the float test, by floating. Floaters usually aren't filled out all the way. Often floaters have leathery nut meat, that tastes surprisingly good, but different from more mature nuts.

Keith

X2

Does anyone know of any market for walnut hulls? I got 6 gallons off of these nuts. I'll probably have upwards of 400 pounds of walnut hulls this season.

Keith

Thanks.

Keith

I went and checked a couple of places I have access to for nuts today. The trees look good. The nut crop crop looks good. The squirrel crop looks too large. Last year, the squirrels left nearly nothing for me. I am going to have to check and collect frequently.

Buckeye nuts in the hull. I took these off the tree, because there was give in the hull when I squeezed them. All the hulls on the ground were empty, probably because of the too many squirrels.



The buckeyes that were in those hulls. There were a lot of doubles.



Shagbark hickory nuts. Most have bug damage. The main drop is probably 2 weeks off.



Keith

Here's my nuts. 2,220 bur oak, ready to plant.

That's a nice haul of acorns. Are you putting the burr oak acorns in air pruning beds, pots or where you want them permanently?

There seems to be no acorns near here this year. My partner can hopefully get some in Wilmington.

I'm going to hunt a good friend's woods this week for nuts and plants. It's still early on most nuts here yet. I want to dig and pot up at least 100 more gooseberry bushes. I dug and potted a bunch in May. I cut them back to a few inches and they mostly look great now, with 20 some inches of new growth on many of them. I think I will likely sell through those this next month. It's nice to be able to pull a plant out of a section of woods, that is getting bulldozed, pot it up and sell it for $20.00 to $30.00 a few months later. Even counting watering, I only have a few minutes labor in each plant.

Keith