tell me about pecans

[mskrieger]

Hi folks,

A recent storm brought down a pin cherry, making room along the north edge of my property for a new tree. The neighboring trees are oak and bitternut hickory. All beautiful and productive but not enjoyable eating.

I was thinking of planting a shagbark hickory in the open spot, because its bitternut cousins do so well back there. But hickories take a long time to come into bearing (40 years?) 

A hybrid chestnut is an option, but they're not a storage nut, and one of the appeals of nuts is that you can leave them for a year or two and they're still good eating.

That brings us to pecans. I love the nuts. I'm tempted to plant one. But traditionally New England is not pecan territory. Then again, the climate is so obviously warming, I'm thinking my summers are getting long and warm enough to ripen pecans.

So. Do you have a pecan tree at your place or nearby? What are your spring/summer/falls like? How hot? How long? How wet? And is there really a different between 'hardy' pecans and southern ones, or is it simply the climate that makes the nut taste more or less sweet? Tell me.

[philagardener]

You might want to check out www.northernnutgrowers.org/cultivarinventorysearch.htm . Members trade scion wood and maybe seeds for northern nuts. Several of them used to be interested in hardy pecans but that might have died out.

[castanea]

Nov 6, 2016 11:08:09 GMT -5 mskrieger said:

Hi folks,

A recent storm brought down a pin cherry, making room along the north edge of my property for a new tree. The neighboring trees are oak and bitternut hickory. All beautiful and productive but not enjoyable eating.

I was thinking of planting a shagbark hickory in the open spot, because its bitternut cousins do so well back there. But hickories take a long time to come into bearing (40 years?) 

A hybrid chestnut is an option, but they're not a storage nut, and one of the appeals of nuts is that you can leave them for a year or two and they're still good eating.

That brings us to pecans. I love the nuts. I'm tempted to plant one. But traditionally New England is not pecan territory. Then again, the climate is so obviously warming, I'm thinking my summers are getting long and warm enough to ripen pecans.

So. Do you have a pecan tree at your place or nearby? What are your spring/summer/falls like? How hot? How long? How wet? And is there really a different between 'hardy' pecans and southern ones, or is it simply the climate that makes the nut taste more or less sweet? Tell me.

Your climate is probably going to get a lot colder.

www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/12/winter-is-coming-warns-the-solar-physicist-the-alarmists-tried-to-silence/

[steev]

I may regret that my inclination is to be disinclined to such opinions which draw grand conspiracies against "conventional truth"; having trained as a zoologist (yes, a scientist), I really believe that truth is right there in plain sight; largely obvious, if one studies it, and subject to peer-review and common consent as to its value; exposed to open debate and criticism; not promoted on "popular" media for sensationalist attention from the less-critically educated, nor the less technically educated.

Oh, did that sound like I'm dumping on the ignorant? I'm so sorry, but not really. At some point, people need to start listening to facts/data, not faith/bullshit. Otherwise, we're doomed to more of the same sectarian crap that we see ripping up the Middle East; more of what ripped apart Northern Ireland; more of what ripped apart Yugoslavia.

Is it possible that we can chill and work on what works for us all, or are we really so gratified by "psychological truth" that we are ready to dispense with here-and-now truth? Is pie in he sky really more important than chow on the table?

[reed]

I don't know about what they call southern pecans, those big ones from Georgia or Alabama but we have a large variety of pecans here in southern Indiana. They are smaller, some much so, but taste better than the big ones. They grow fast, the biggest old trees are in church yards, graveyards and so on in the little towns along the river. Some are huge, although many have been murdered for no good reason in recent years. One of my favorite trees was in the yard of our local museum. It's in an old two story church building and that tree dwarfed the building, it shaded most of a city block. They killed it cause it put too much shade on their stupid building and caused mold on the brick, I better stop now on that topic.

I have planted hundreds, maybe thousands of them over the years and have stepped that project up even more now that the ash trees all died. Anyway I bet they would grow for you. Trees I planted 40 years ago are as big around as garbage cans, they are wonderful trees. I don't know that they are growing any better here than when it was colder and wetter but at least they aren't dying like the maples and poplars.

Anyway when you say "tempted to plant one" do you mean buy a tree someplace, dig a hole put it in there, water it and all that stuff? That's fine but I suggest a PM with your address and I'll send you a small box full of pecan trees. All you gotta do is stick them in the ground about two inches and wait. My sister lived in Maine for about twenty years and just moved last August. Winter there as far as cold and snow goes was about like it was here fifty years ago so I bet our pecans will grow for you just fine.

Twenty years from now you can be last one in your neighborhood to have any trees at all, charge people a dollar and a half just to see em. 

[add] I'v come to the opinion in recent years that it is a bad idea to plant a tree. A tree is nice but often you pay  out money, go to lot of trouble and barring disease, storms, bugs or whatever what do you get? A tree. So now you have a tree and barring disease, bugs, storms you can keep it. I don't do that anymore, I plant a woods. I started planting pecans and hickory by seed as soon as I heard of the emerald ash borer, a couple of the pecans are 15 feet tall now but I didn't stop. Every year for the last few years I'v went out in the woods and got maple, oaks and sycamores. I bought dawn redwoods, ginko and supposed to be disease resistant American elm. Some of them are not more that three feet apart just like they do in the wild, I trim off bottom branches just like happens in the wild. I mulch and even water sometimes and I never dig. I broadcast seed of flowers I find by creeks and along the roads. I's a pretty little woods now, I visit with it every day. 

[khoomeizhi]

i'm in the western north carolina mountains. my nut tree growing friends and i were pretty well convinced that we couldn't grow pecans here since it tends to cool down too much at night - the topography just drains heat away. there are some pecan trees in the area - they grow fine but the nuts just don't fill out. then a friend of ours just over the blue ridge in johnson city, tn, declared that we were crazy, since there are productive pecans all over the city there. so the jury's still out. we're going to try growing from some johnson city seed, as well as grafting some, just to see. many of the carya in our orchards are pecans, but only for the rootstock. they'll mostly be grafted over to hickory for production - which could be an option for you, too. faster growth, earlier bearing, and a bit better drought resistance. from what i've seen, 40 years to bear for hickories is pretty excessive, though - except maybe for a tree that spends a couple decades as an understory tree. in general it's more in the 12-15 year range (of course there are always exceptions). still long, but pecans aren't a whole lot sooner.

there's also definitely a difference between northern and southern pecans, though i don't think it's hardiness as much as varietal differences in size and needs for ripening.

[castanea]

Northern pecans are usually smaller, but to my taste buds, they are also usually better flavored.

[steev]

So often the little northern buggers are better flavored; don't know what that's about, but it seems true, so far as I know. Maybe lesser effort, less overall inclination to produce a good product.

[reed]

The crop overall this year was pretty poor, some trees didn't make any at all plus they are favorites of the squirrels. I went out one day last week and only got about a gallon total from six or seven trees. There was a tree in town that made nuts almost as big as southern ones but it has been cut down. I'm hopeful that it is represented in my collection, I planted plenty but it will be another few years before I find out. One of my twenty year old hickories planted from seed tried to produce this year but they were all underdeveloped and dried up.

[steev]

How are the squirrels?

[reed]

Not bad, with biscuits and gravy. I always preferred mine without buckshot, a .22 takes a little more skill but yields much better presentation on the plate.

[khoomeizhi]

northern pecans are generally better flavored than southern - but i'd still put a good shagbark hickory before either.

[steev]

I've always thought shag-anything is good.

I've not eaten squirrel, but I think gopher and ground-squirrel will show up in my stock-pot eventually, when I'm living (cooking) on the farm. I like my break-barrel pellet gun as it is much like a .22, presentation-of-chow-wise.

I should shoot/eat the damned squirrels here in Oakland but city ordinances and all; they are a PITA.

[mskrieger]

Thanks to everyone who's chimed in so far--I especially like reed's suggestion to plant a woods. That's basically what I've got back there anyway. No shortage of hickory seedling rootstock, the squirrels do that for me!