English (Carpathian) Walnut: the saga bears fruit

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

In 2006, my sons and I planted 10 English walnut trees, now 5 seasons later we have our first nut.  (See photos.)  Coming from a large family, I realized I could track the progress of the trees best by naming them after my siblings & parents.  (And who doesn't think their family is at least a tad nutty and yet somehow majestic?)  So the first nut came from the Sharon (older sister) tree.

Sharon hung back the first 3 seasons, but lunged ahead last year doubling her vertical growth in one year.  Then, lo and behold, she produced a nut.  I never saw her blossom, but I understand that English Walnuts are self-pollinating, producing a unisex catkins with both the female & male components.  In the composite drawing below from Botanical.com, you can see the various parts of an English walnut (click on the image to enlarge).

So how are the English walnuts different from Black walnuts?  Well, the first thing I noticed was that they have this fine fuzz growing on the outside of the green outer coating. I was actually able to capture the fuzz on the close-up shot of the nut while it was still on the tree.  It seemed that the fuzz disappeared as the nut got closer to maturity.

Another difference, and a most welcome one, is that the green covering is more like a chestnut's (minus the chestnut spines), than it is like a black walnut's.  It's only about a quarter of an inch thick and peels away from the shell easily.  Yeah!

Last week on the equinox, the outer green coating ruptured on its own, while the nut continued hanging on its branch.  So I picked it.

You're supposed to cure walnuts for a couple of weeks before breaking them open, which is great because I don't have the heart to crack it at this point.  My plan is to bring the nut & my cracker to a family gathering in a few weeks.   Older sister Sharon, who lives in Bangor, Maine, will be present and (assuming all is well inside the nut) we can share it.  Will let you know how the next step goes...

             

[IthacaNancy]

Very exciting! Thanks for the info. I hesitated planting walnuts due to the long time before harvesting anything, but now I think I'll try.

[Krys Cail]

Before we lived at our house here, which was a long, long time ago, we lived up at City Lights near EcoVillage.... and there were two wonderful Carpathian Walnut trees in the backyard. Should go look and see if they are still there.

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

You probably could pick up some good nuts if the current owners are collecting them themselves. I wonder why there aren't more Carpathians around here?

[Mark Norton]

How old were the tree seedlings when you planted them?

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

They were 2 year old stock.

[Mark Norton]

The trees I showed you at our place are all 5 year olds. I'd like to get walnuts, but I'd rather start with 5 years than 2's. This is more than just impatience on my part. We've tried growing bare root seedlings - 1 year olds, but they mostly failed. Only one single plum tree survived (and it is doing VERY well.

[Katie Quinn-Jacobs]

I'm of a mixed mind about when is the best time to start trees. On the walnuts I've had to replace 2 of the 10; one was girdled in winter by mice (so that's not a root stock issue), the other just pooped out during the 2nd season for no apparent reason. So, I look at it as a 90% success rate in terms of the trees establishing their own viable roots.

The attrition we've had with other fruit & nut trees seems to occur equally with older and younger stock. I think if it's a fast growing tree, like peaches for example, planting younger stock is easier for the trees. I had great luck with plums (they transitioned fast and matured into nice trees with gobs of fruit) until the black fungus moved in.