My northern pecans!

It only took 40 years but I finally got some nuts to set. I gathered pecans from a roadside tree in northwestern Missouri in the fall of 1985. Planted them the next spring and finally success!

That's nuts!

that is awseome i was just looking at fruit trees yesterday. im so torn on what to buy and plant. i will only be at this property for another 10 to 15 years. i know i want apples and would love to have peaches as well. but with all the varieties of fruit trees it is a little overwhelming trying to pick what will be best for my area of northern illinois.

Mom planted good fruit trees from the nursery and if it wasn't the first year it was the second they were loaded down with fruit. I never had that kind of luck buying them at Lowes.

This is a Tiana peach from Adams County Nursery in Pennsylvania that I planted this spring 3/8ths caliper trees. Several of the trees set 1-4 peaches in their first year. Adams County is a great nursery to deal with. Tiana is a late peach...that pic was taken just a week ago.

It's best to graft onto nut trees for early and known production. The Ohio Nut Growers Association, which I joined back in the Spring, gives away hundreds of scions of named cultivars, in many species of nuts, plus fruit trees. The grafted scions produce in 1 to 2 years.

Keith

This is good information. I was interested in this seedling roadside tree because it was literally carpeting the ground and road with very nice big pecans. Western Oregon probably doesn't have enough heat units to mature a pecan nut but I wanted to try anyway.

Most seedling pecans will produce decent nuts, particularly if seedling off a named cultivar. They will undoubtedly have commercial flaws, size, color, alternate bearing, scab suseptibility, etc, but generally, they won't be the tiny wild type. Down here, pecans are everywhere in every fencerow, and unless purposely planted as a purchased tree, they will be seedling. Matter of fact, most named cultivars arose as a seedling on the fencerow of a pecan orchard.

Curious, do you have other pecans nearby? Pecans need another variety for pollination. They aren't self infertile, but the male catkins open at a different time than the female nuts are receptive with very little to no overlap depending on cultivar and weather. Further, there are two types male first, then female, and the reverse of female first male last.

The commercial orchards will plant a mix of types to ensure pollination. But they also try to pick a mix of similar nuts, so they tend to grade out the same with similar drop times for a shorter harvest window. Also, new orchards often are planted close spacing with precocious cultivars in the mix that will provide early production but then be removed as the canopy closes and later bearing ones come on line.

Down here, pollination for backyard trees isn't an issue since pecans are literally everywhere.

BTW most folks have never seen a true wild type that produces nuts the size of a soup bean. Selection for size began long before white folks ever set foot on the continent.

Pecans are a species of hickory and are cross fertile with other hickories. Hicans are made by crossing pecan on shellbark hickory. Some hicans are immense with excellent flavor. I ate some last week.

At our booth at the Farm Science Review, ONGA had a bunch of very mixed up nuts. One guy, from near me, planted heartnuts he bought and got a dozen plus different looking nuts from the trees in the next generation. They apparently had butternut, black walnut and English walnut genetics too. It's suspected that most of the heart nuts that have survived the blight have heartnut genetics. Heartnuts are a sport of the Asian walnut. Many easily split perfectly in half, like a locket. The nut meat stays intact and is heart shaped too.

I have 11 gallons of heartnuts in hulls I collected, that I am going to cold striate and plant. I hope to get more heartnuts still, but other people are collecting them too. They are near named cultivars of black walnuts, so I don't know what I will get out of them. I'll graft onto some of them.

Keith

Not all hickories, but yes, some hickories. There are two groups differing by chromosome count. I can't recall which.

I only got 20 years to wait on the pecans, I guess. Planted two 3 year old trees 20 years ago and still nothing. Peaches come on every year but none ever stay to maturity!

Many pecans trees benefit from grafting.

Grand dad got a wild hair and had the guy that came around with scion wood graft five different types on one tree. Had a big papershell, a long skinny one about as big and shaped like your little finger, a small round one and a couple others. Hurricane Frederick in 79 dropped it on the smokehouse.

BTW it used to be a thing back in the day for a nurseryman to travel farm to farm with scion wood for sale.

Any idea where in NW MO the tree was? Have never saw a pecan in NW MO.

The two things pecans require the most are sunlight, why you never find one in the deep woods, and if you do it bears very poorly, and regular water. Zinc is the micronutrient they need the most, and fertilizer need is moderate at 25lb 10-10-10 per tree per year split in two applications.
Down here, the biggest issue is scab, which is fungal and driven by humidity. Some cultivars can't be grown due to high susceptibility. Aphids, both yellow and black, can be a serious problem as well with varying resistance by cultivar. Commercial operations rely on fungal sprays and insectides.

Warrior is right about the need of the catkins to produce pollen at the right moment. There are no wild pecans in Oregon. I did plant two seedlings together though in the hope of cross pollination.

One of the benefits of climate change.

You are totally nuts……

good read thanks for posting

Pecans are my favorite nut to eat. I just bought two 32 ounce bags at Sam's Club for $12.95. Lots of healthy benefits in pecans.