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Well after what has to be the oddest weather this spring and early summer we finally have some heat.  We’ve irrigated less than normal, a bit in March and then occasionally until this week and now probably quite regularily!

The cold April & May did for a lot of the male flowers, some of our seedling trees did the best but by the end of May nothing seemed to have male flowes but a lot of varieties had female flowers!

Lara (picture below) seems to have done the best and for young trees (in for 7 years) have quite a good crop, there are some Broadview, Buccaneer, Jupiter and the much younger Fernor & Fernette have some nuts.  The only Red variety with nuts is Red Seal but they’re all mostly very young trees. We have a few new varieties to plant this Autumn that are late into leaf (compared with most Red ones).

Finally we’re starting to see juvenile leaves on most varieties of walnut with Fernor & Lara & Bonifac & Kesei just about breaking the terminal bud.

I’d estimate flowering will be 3-5 weeks late this year but as long as we have a reasonable summer we should be ok for a good crop as it’s actually rained quite a lot and warmed up somewhat.

The Carya & Heartnuts are also breaking bud although they all started early in April and then got stopped by the cold weather.

Fingers crossed that this year we have no late May frosts!

We have been informed that De Samllekamp are not grafting this winter which means we will not have any of their trees this coming year 2021.

We are hoping that they will be back to normal next winter but it does mean we have no Carya cultivars of any sort this coming year having sold out this autumn. Nor will we have any Giant or Dwarf trees.

We are hoping to have a selection of new exciting and hard to find Heartnuts and Red Walnuts subject to grafting in January, we will post detail when we know for sure.

We still have a stock of Pot Grown and duirng the winter Bare-Rooted walnut cultivars.

First batch of walnuts in the new drier ready for sale, Red Dabube is a strikingly deep red this year.

Dried nuts will be available to buy on the Granary Oils site this week.

We will also have a new supply of grafted walnut trees later this autumn, pot grown and bare-rooted, contact Tom for more details, 07816674854

Mini Multiflora No 9., lovely nuts, about 30mm in shell, pale kernel and good taste.

This was off a tree that was planted two years ago and has been flowering from March to August.

Bud break is well under way now, some of the earlier varieties are now into juvenile leaf but the later ones are still a few weeks off, the buds on the likes of Franquette, Fernor, Chandler etc haven’t even started to swell yet.  We’re praying we don’t get a hard mid May frost like last year which really knocked back the young trees especially.

This year it looks like the trees are at least a week or so early but the frosts at the end of March just slowed things down again.

As the trees get more mature it’s very apparent which varieties will be some of the most prolific pollinators as well, Broadview & Jupiter looks especially busy.

One or two female flowers starting to appear as well although they’re no quite receptive yet.

The heartnuts are all in juvenile leaf now, they seem to come into leaf early like the first English Walnuts.

Fedex will increase their prices from January 2020, our transport charges will be as follows from this date;

Economy £9.50, extra parcels £5.50 each

Next day £11.50, extra parcels £7.00 each

I’ve just received some seed from the last original heartnut in ‘Kalmar’, Sweden, thank you Prof Jan Berggren! We’re going to sow this and hope we get some seedlings that share the parents resiliance to cold and it’s regular fruiting.

This is a variety I’ve tried to buy as a grafted tree without success to add to our collection. The named tree produces medium sized nuts about the size of a 10p piece.

Test run of the the new walnut shelling line from AMB Rousset.

Despite putting mostly seedling nuts through it works really well, sorting the nuts by size with our homemade Sizer before cracking will improve the process even more saving a lot of manual labour.

Another spring gone and the rain has given the trees a boost after a really cold dry spring. Most of the earlier leafing varieties got frosted this year which really knocked them back and even the late varieties were held.

Some varieties have lost all their female flowers which is unusual but gives us an idea of their cold hardiness which hasn’t been documented before, Saturn in particular has no nuts even though the trees are in full leaf and have recovered well from being twice frosted.

Our young potted trees by contrast have been growing madly and although we’ve sold a lot the remaining ones will need taller boxes unless they’re sold locally! We still have some Mars, Chiara, Lake & a few other Red & Giant walnuts.

We’re just finalising our new stock list for this summer and should have newly grafted trees available from August, all pot grown cultivars including Heartnuts which have been very popular.