Oaks

[steev]

Yes, the Cali Indians relied on acorns for a lot of their carbs. the climate providing other nutrients mostly year-round. I figure even if I don't want to process them for myself, they're good pig-chow. Here in Oakland, Korean women seem to be into harvesting them, these days.

The past month, I've cleaned up a large quantity of acorns, of which I will plant out some, work-time permitting; they'll require caging from the critters (boar really love acorns and other critters will mess them up while they're young trees); got to get over to the park for some cork-oak acorns before the squirrels get them all.

[khoomeizhi]

Our nuts orchards have some oaks in them - burrs and whites, all planted from seed. Since we planted them we've gotten more interested in oil crops, though, so any future planting of oaks will probably be blacks, which we've already started pressing oil from (from foraged nuts). The nice thing is if you get good shell separation, you can leach the presscake for flour afterwards (on some shellier lots, you can at least extract starch). We also got a lot of sawtooth acorns in, and we'll be experimenting with them before long. Had good production of chestnut oak flour earlier this year.

[jocelyn]

Yup, got a robur oak bearing reliably, and have planted a white (alba) oak that is still tiny.. There is a bur oak in the porch, potted, and a bur acorn, but it's pretty chewed so may not make it. I was happy to discover two bur oaks at the Experimental Farm property, but was too late this year to get acorns. I have a seed orchard for red oaks, and plant them in our woods. The English oak, robur, produces acorns that taste reasonably good right off the tree. Fun, isn't it?

[oxbowfarm]

I have several Burr oak that I've planted that are doing well. I've got a couple swamp white oak that are kind of just sitting there not growing much so far. I also have two white oak seedlings I've found in my woodlot that I've built protective cages around and mulched. Nothing producing acorns in my woodlot that isn't a red oak. I'm pretty happy with my burr oaks, I've had almost 6' of growth from most of them the last two years, I do have mulch circles of compost and woodchips surrounding them, so I'm babying them along.

[walt]

Years ago I planted edible oak seedling from

oikostreecrops.com/products/oaks/the-edible-acorn/

 But I later had to to move and I don't even know if they are alive.

[reed]

We have several types of oaks and I have planted literally thousands of acorns over the decades for no real reason except I like oak trees. I sweep them up off sidewalks in towns along with pecans and just stick them in the ground anywhere I go for a walk. All that aside I don't know one from another as far as a name goes.

I'v tasted small acorns from trees with sharply pointed leaves and whose lower branches point down when grown out in the open, these come in a range and are all terrible.

Very large acorns from trees with rounded lobes to the leaves and very rough bark are actually not too bad. These also come in a range, the largest ones and whose caps pop off easily are best.

I suppose either might be improved by leaching and or roasting?

[andyb]

I cold-leached some coarsely ground acorn flour one time. I put it in a jar, filled it with water, let it sit for a few hours, then drained and repeated the process until most of the tannins were gone. I dried it out to a doughy texture and cooked it sort of like you cook corn tortillas, in a dry pan.

It was one of the most delicious wild foods I've ever tasted, but it was so much work that I haven't ever done it again.

I have no idea what kind of oak it was; something growing in the landscaping outside a bank in Tucson, AZ.

[khoomeizhi]

One reason we're so excited about pressing black oak acorns for oil is that since the tannins are water-soluble, they don't come out in the oil. Got that rich acorn flavor (and smell). Plus blacks have the highest amount of oil we've found. Followed by reds (both northern and southern, both of which are in our area).

[philagardener]

khoomeizhi , what sort of oil press are you using and do you also have a sheller, or do you remove by hand?

[khoomeizhi]

We took out loans from two of our biggest supporters/fans for the press - it's the one made by Oilpress.Co. it cost about $10K with the couple add-ons we got. The main thrust of all our sales this year is to get it paid back off so we can operate in the black next season. We have enough nuts stored up now that we should be able to pull it off. The bitternut hickories are the real workhorses on that front. (Like acorns, the bitter tannins are water-soluble and don't come out in the oil)

For shelling acorns, our best option at present is the woodworkers' dust collector that we modified to use as a winnower. We kind of de-modify it to crack acorns so that they can all be poured through the fan, which does a better job on them than our actual cracker - they come through as halves or whole shelled nuts. Then we turn it back into a winnower to pull out the shells and run it all back through. We unfortunately haven't gotten perfect separation yet - unfortunately for leaching the presscake directly to make flour. For the press, it actually helps to have some amount of shell in there to help things move along (like fiber for our guts).

We did a year of testing/experimenting with one of those hand-crank piteba oil presses to have enough info to convince our sponsors that we would be a relatively safe bet for repaying our debt. Collecting 3000 lbs of bitternuts sealed the deal. The piteba works fine, though, for home-scale.

We're doing our best not to hand-pick anything in our process since that knocks our efficiency way back.

[philagardener]

Impressive! Especially the trick with the dust collector. That is one strong fan blade!

[andyb]

william I was thinking about oaks in Montana and remembered that I knew of one and only one house that had oak trees in front of it when I was a kid growing up in Helena. They're probably still there, just a few blocks from my parents' house. Since they're in the strip between the sidewalk and the street, it would probably be fine to pick up a few acorns when they're in season. If they survived for 40+ years in Helena, they must be pretty cold-tolerant.

Let me know if you'd like me to ask my parents to check them out when they're on one of their evening walks.

[khoomeizhi]

Small striped (medium-sized striped as well) in this area would be black oak. We see them planted as city trees pretty frequently.

[hardypears]

William, I have a sweet white oak from the out of business Bear Creek Nursery. I copice it now as it was in the apple orchard. It seemed to have semi mature acorns, I never tried to grow the acorns.I should try to layer the sprouts again. Also growing an English oak in the shade of a spruce. In zone 3, so getting it started was difficult, going well now but no acorns and growing 4ft a year average.

[socal2warm]

I'm growing several Cork Oak (Quercus suber) seedlings. This is the species where cork stoppers in wine bottles traditionally comes from.
They are evergreen (don't lose their leaves in the Winter) and extremely drought tolerant, though they're only cold hardy down to about zone 8.

One thing I am a bit interested in is trying to hybridize them with English oak. Yeah, I know, they're not in the same oak section but I still have some reason to believe it may be possible. Apparently hybrids of Q. ilex are known with both Q. suber and Q. robur. (articles I've read suggest it is only possible if Q. suber is acting as the pollen parent)
I believe such a hybrid might be ideally suited for the PNW climate, combining evergreen characteristics with drought tolerance in the dry summer.