The trees I shall discuss here are those considered in the post 2007 Nut Report.
How will this work? We will have seed available this fall from these ~25 source trees showing superiority in several variables (e.g. kernel yield per tree, leaf spotting disease resistance).
Firstly, you should be sure that you have a good site – reasonably deep clay loams are best; heavy undrained clays, or very sandy soils will not work.
When you know your site, measure it, and see how many rows of trees you think you can plant. We use rows 6m (20’) apart and plant our trees 6m apart within the rows, but you could use a different between-row spacing if you choose (best not less than this within the row). One field of ours has 12m between rows. You could go higher, especially if you want to continue farming between the rows.
To ensure comparability between all sites, we propose to provide a planting plan according to the number of trees you are interested in. We will request that you plant according to the plan we provide, otherwise we cannot guarantee that we will be able to compare your data to others’.
When you know the size and shape of your site, and have determined the numbers of trees and spacing, divide your site into two components:
a. a rectangular centre section which will be the section we will provide you nuts for, your experimental block; and
b. the outside rows (sides and ends), which you will find your own local seed for ( these are the ones the squirrels will find first, if you have a squirrel problem).
We will divide all available screened seed into packages. The numbers of nuts in a package will correspond to the numbers of rows you have identified in your centre section/experimental block (x 2, as you will plant two nuts per tree location). We will send you the number of packages that correspond to the number of trees in the rows. So you are going to tell us that your centre section is 20 x 8, for example, equivalent to 20 trees per row in 8 rows. The planting plan will provide you the randomly selected positions of each tree in each row, so that you would plant each of the mother-tree selections 8 times across the rows. We suggest that you limit the size of this experimental block to 20 x 8 or less, because you would require 320 (40 x 8) nuts for it, which will be a large drain on our seed resources if many people are interested, and will be the basis on which we calculate cost (cost per nut, including the planting plan, and our email support/quantitative analysis for as long as you send complete annual data sets will be about $1.00).
We would suggest this anyway, because you could always expand in a subsequent year, and you are better off starting with a small block and working out what seems to be working and what doesn’t. We suggest the minimum number of rows to be 4-5, and block size 4 x 4 or 4 x 5. We will suggest how to plant the seed in a later post, but it may be that not every nut germinates, and you will want to replace some ungerminated nuts with nuts from the same mother tree a year later. We typically do this, so factor it in as quite probable.
Participants will purchase the number of packets of seed that correspond to their plan, one per mother tree, up to the total number of trees in their rows. We will generate and post a selected list. Seed packets will be distributed (first-come, first-served) in the order of the trees on the list until that particular tree is sold out (different trees will produce different numbers of nuts; we will retain and plant a seed packet of each source tree to ensure we have trees with which to compare yours). The selected list will rank trees in accordance with the data that we currently have, using the kernel yield per tree for 2007 as the primary indicator. Every other indicator that we use (e.g. leaf disease expression) will be successively discounted by approximately 50%, so that what we know to be economically important receives the greatest weight in our selection. We will post our development of this ranking procedure.
We expect the select list to change in size each year, as we add trees to it (while we like the current 25, we do not guarantee them yet to be the best in our plantation; the current 25 will be kept on to provide replacement seed, and to act as the reference trees in our analyses). If you plant future blocks, planting plans can account for the mother trees already represented in your present block.
If you plant, we hope that you will commit to collecting data on these trees, and sharing it with us. In fact, what we are proposing is really a regional information network, to form the basis of an emerging nut industry. This requires multiple sites.
We commit to maintaining, for as long as we are able, all data on your growing trees, and providing you with annual performance charts concomitant with the number of seed trees represented in your planting. As suggested above, you may wish to undertake something like this iteratively, planting in successive years. We will accommodate your iterative program.
Why do this? We believe black walnut provides the only opportunity for nut production at a commercial scale in much of eastern
I am sorry, but we will not be able to ship seed to the US. All other international destinations will be at your risk.
2 comments:
Neil
In your September 11th post you state that “We believe black walnut provides the only opportunity for nut production at a commercial scale in much of eastern Canada”. I would be interested in reviewing your analysis. Specifically, Heartnut trees would produce a higher percentage of kernel, the most lucrative part of the nut crop. I would think the ease of cracking and separation of kernel & shell on average would also be improved. Is it possible the analysis has included the timber value and not just nut production?
timber cat,
Here is a conversation that could go on for hours. Most of my reasoning is based on the fact that Black Walnut is at least native to southern Ontario and adapted into Quebec. An exotic, such as Heartnut, is going to be limited by genetic diversity, let alone the probability that it won't fruit outside southern Ontario. Nobody I know has resolved the issue of cracking and separating technology, so talking about lucrativeness is not currently based on reality. No, there's no inclusion of timber value in the analysis, because a productive nut tree (i.e. grown for nuts) doesn't have much timber value. In the US, black walnut kernel sells in supermarkets at about $1/25g. Heartnut is not available.
For the rest, I'm afraid you'll have to wait for the book!
Biomaster.
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