News

Flowering has started early

The very mild wet winter with no really cold frosts (-5C Lowest) has meant a much earlier bud break and flowering start, 10-14 days depending on cultivar. This is true of all the different walnut species (including the Carya) and pretty much every Heartnut has juvenile leaves already, we’re praying no frosts now but realistically we need to get to mid May here to relax. The very latest cultivars like Fernor have just started loosening their outer bud scales about a week early.

It’s too early to say what effect the wettest winter in maybe 100+ years will have apart from killing a few trees in marginal positions, a bit more blight possibly if we get a very dry summer again, which for us on our mostly acidic old pasture seems to be an issue in some parts of the orchard.

The 1st picture below is of the heavy male catkins developing on walnut Jupiter already, these will probably start dropping pollen in 2-3 weeks maximum, they won’t be the earliest but it is one of the heaviest and most reliable of our main crop pollinators, better than Broadview which seems more sensitive if there are any frosts around.

The second image is of walnut Sychrov’s female and male flowers, this is always the earliest to bud break and set pollen and unfortunately 4 out of 5 years gets frosted, of the main crop walnuts Saturn is probably the next which is why we took out 35 trees and only left 15.

Grafting time

Grafting this year with smaller rootstocks which isn’t as flexible, last year I had many that were 20-25mm diameter in the 100mm above the root line. However the first 100 or so are in the hot-pipe bench and it’s up to temperature so fingers crossed.

This year I managed to get a lot of scion wood from Upton Wold courtesy of My Ian Bond, hopefully this will add to the list of Juglans with cultivars of Cinerea, Ailantifolia, Regia and Nigra.

Of particular interest are two late Regia pollinators, Cyril from the Netherlands which is very late and Corne de Perigord from France which we think will be important for us in the future to ensure pollination of late flowerers like Fernor.

The other we’d like to graft is Ronde de Montignac, next month I hope.

Common cultivars – our view so far

One of the biggest blocks to people planting walnuts is the lack of reliable descriptions of cultivars commonly available in the UK. Almost all descriptions of individual cultivars are copies of copies often, of a translation from another language.

I’ve put together a summery of some of these common cultivars with the common descriptions (amalgamated from various sources) and then a brief summary from our experiences. Note that we are in a very cold part of the UK that is fairly dry and is prone to spring frosts, we rarely escape April frosts and mid May frosts are not unknown.

This is not an exhaustive list, we have another 40 cultivars not on it and there are hundreds more worldwide, these are the ones often seen for sale in the UK. Our trees are very young but we see orchards all over the UK so have some experience from other micro-climates.

Download list

Pecans & Hickory Nuts & some images

I get asked a great deal about growing Carya cultivars for nuts in the UK, Pecans mostly but also Hickories and Hicans.

We’re growing them here and others are doing the same but I understand that everyone wants to know if they will fruit regularily here. The answer I give is yes they should (ours are a few years away) and I know of a few people already getting nuts but there is no guarantee that they will grow and fruit everywhere in the UK, we have some extremes of climate.

We grow and supply trees grafted by Ton Friesen in Nunspeet, Netherlands and they fruit successfully for him when they get to 8-10 years on average, these are all grafted named cultivars, below are some picture of the nuts on his trees this October. His climate is very similar to the South Midlands in terms of temperature, although he’s often a little wetter than us surprisingly.

I would say good deep soil with decent drainage (all walnuts hate wet feet), protection in the first few years. All Carya will also spend a few years putting down deep taproots before really growing upwards but once happy will grow a meter a more a year.

The Pecans are all Northern or Ultra Northern cultivars and all the Carya he grafts are on Northern pecan rootstocks grown specially for him.

Image 1 & 2 are Hicans, the next two Pecans.

Hican Burton
Hican NT92

The Agroforestry Show

A great day out at the The Agroforestry Show last Thursday.
It took place at Helen Browing’s Eastbrook Farm in Wiltshire and despite being seriously hot was very well attended.
Lots to see in the different plots and speakers to listen to and thank you to everyone I chatted to before and after our “Future Nut Production in the UK” event, a similar forum to the one we did at the ORFC in January but obviously with a more Agroforestry flavour.
A lot to think about and plenty of new calls and emails to answer in the next few days and weeks I think!
(the pic is of one of our fields, I forgot to any pics on site!)

New Commercial Walnut Growing Courses

I have now scheduled two more walnut growing courses, the first is outside the AONB’s funding and the second is as before so anyone inside the Cotswold AONB will get their place FOC.

The course runs 9.00am to about 3.00-3.30pm depending on questions etc.

Both events are now live on Evenbrite.

11th September         Growing English Walnuts for Profit Tickets, Mon 11 Sep 2023 at 09:00 | Eventbrite

Places cost £110 inclusive of booking fee and VAT

 13th November         Growing English Walnuts for Profit in the Cotswold AONB Tickets, Mon 13 Nov 2023 at 09:00 | Eventbrite

Places free inside the Cotswold AONB, outside will pay a reduced fee.