Pushing through, black walnut crop report

Quicksilver definitely has a cold. That meant that I spent time cruising Youtube rather than working. I expect that in due time I will have symptoms but for now I don't.

 

Three minute Youtube short. The Comfort Trap. Boys (men) need purpose. Rescuing them from their setbacks burns their "man-card".

 

 

Two minute Youtube short. It is a waste of time to argue with fools or fanatics.

I was able to make a quick trip to the property that has the Upper and Hill orchard. As reported Here and Here, my plan it to plant "Dacha" or pocket-sized orchards near sites that are reasonable places to build a house.

Today's task was to cut the walnut and elm trees in the future orchards' footprints, drill holes in the stumps and fill them with herbicide.

I used a lab "wash bottle" filled with 1/3 glyphosate concentrate, 2/3 water to fill a .325" diameter hole drilled about 1-1/2" deep into each stump. The wash bottle made for a very tidy job and the task was executed with zero drama.

Looking east. T-posts with red tops alternating with T-posts with white tops. One of the T-posts (right of center) is holding up my (pink) post driver.

I also pounded in "T" posts every place I intend to plant a tree. The last time I was out there I had enough posts to outline the footprint of the orchards and to pound one in every-other tree. Yesterday I filled in the gaps.

The north orchard will have three rows of five. The south orchard will have two rows of seven.

There is a seedling mulberry tree growing close to the site of the north Dacha orchard site. I suspect that it will get grafted to improved varieties next spring.

I had several graft failures with mulberry this year. Some of them were Silk Hope. They were all growing fine. They were all knocked off by deer trying to browse the shoots. The other failed grafts never pushed a bud, a sign of dead scion. That might have been due to cutting the scion after the night when the temperatures dropped to -25F.

Black walnut crop report

After returning home, I toured our property. It has been a while since I walked out-back.

It appears that we have a bumper crop of black walnuts. Sparks 147 (selected in Iowa) is over-achieving. Several of my trees of Drake (Missouri) are performing very well. I am looking at my first decent crop from Hays #1 (Kansas). I have no nuts at all on Emma K (Illinois) or Sparrow (Illinois). Both of those varieties tend to alternate bearing.

Of all the nuts, the Sparks 147 has the most potential as seed nuts, primarily because they are likely pollinated by Drake. That is due to a fortunate alignment of anther shedding pollen-and-pistil receptivity timing between the two varieties and the fact that I have two specimens of Drake immediately upwind of three trees grafted to Sparks 147. It is, of course, impossible to guarantee that any single nut of Sparks 147 was pollinated by Drake, but the math favors that possibility. 

Sparks 147 has nut meats that drop out in halves, which is rare for a black walnut. The trunk tends to be as straight as a pencil with small side branches, so it also makes a good saw-log. Unfortunately, it is significantly less productive than Drake and has a high husk-to-nutmeat ratio.