Selfsufficientish.com

Odsox wrote:

Peggy Sue wrote:Tony- can I beat the squirrel too? Or maybe pickle him...

Probably not, nor the dog either as you would probably have the RSPCA after you.
Just women and walnut trees then

The dog will be pleased, she's very sweet!

Odsox wrote:A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more you beat them the better they be.

I've just noticed this one.....you beat the walnut tree to damage the bark to increase the "figuring" of the wood - thats the pretty pattens that people like in walnut timber...not to harvest the nuts!

This year the squirrel seems to have forgotton the walnut tree- grrreat
No need for any beating, they are all over the floor (and in my nut bowl )

Goodo - I've seen our pesky red squirrel with walnuts but as there are a lot more nuts this year than last, and given that in a very small vicinity there are at least 7 trees including my 3, then there are enough for everyone!

And funnily enough in the 24 hours between my hubby digging me a small new bed for a couple of shrubs, and me planting them, I found 2 buried walnuts! Last year I was so mean I took the buried ones that I found indoors!

Millymollymandy wrote: Last year I was so mean I took the buried ones that I found indoors!

Ah and it bellonged to a red squirrel if it had been a grey

ho ho ho I wouldn't have minded him nicking them to EAT in the depths of winter but the bloody thing forgot about the ones it had buried and I had walnut trees coming up everywhere this spring. Ruddy hard to pull out too!

Just got my seeds MMM! Thankyou.
OH will ahve fun with the packet in French, he likes to think he's fluent but knows about enough to read the menu
You mentioned your writing, it's exactly like my closest friend's- spooky! BTW she's a teacher so can't be all bad

Glad they arrived safe and sound!

Picked hundreds of walnuts yesterday but I think most of the ones off my bigger tree are rotten cos the tree has got a disease and lots of the green outers have turned black and rotten and all those are no good, but I won't know about the others until I crack them so I've still got to pick them and dry them. What a shame.

Iv got about 20kg from my wallnut tree does anyone have any ideas what to do with them?

Well I'd planned to use some in my Chrsitmas cake- but couldn't resist eating them!

My walnut tree produced about 5 kilos of nuts last year. This year I found one nut! There is a jay-like bird that steals my nuts - and you can imagine how much that hurts.
On the recipe front, I chop up the walnuts and add them to my crumble mix. I add whole walnuts to salads and I use them for decoration on the top of my banana bread.

We've approximately 200 walnut trees on the land around the house - they're big business here. However, one tree stands alone quite close to the house and (in my opinion) it had become too big to the point of being dangerous (top heavy). So, to the horror of most of the locals, it got a damn heavy prune (i.e. cherry picker & chainsaw job!) They were convinced it wouldn't survive - oops! However, this year it has come back with interest. We had a huge crop of walnuts on that tree alone and the new branches it has put out I estimate have grown around 10 feet in the one season alone. It looks far happier & I feel a bit safer now it's less top heavy.

Before:


After: (posted as link because the image is a bit wide for here but already uploaded for another place.)

http://www.the-mudhut.com/umbria/iMAG1N ... 25_006.jpg

As an aside, this was done last August. I'm sat here now reaping the benefits of all that butchered walnut - which is keeping me toasty warm as it burns in the woodburning stove ;)

We pruned ours a couple of weeks ago - it's a shame that the time to prune walnuts is around cropping time - there's no way I'm pruning beforehand!

However if you've got 200 trees you wouldn't have really missed out on any! Glad I don't have to harvest them.

They do grow enormously fast - I've been here 5 years now and the 'young' walnut trees' growth has been exceptional, whereas other trees such as a small rowan, I swear, haven't grown an inch in 5 years.

I'm cracking my walnuts now and so far not found too many which are rotten, thankfully! Got about 1,000 this year. I count, not weigh.

We've got a couple of boxes of them - which are more than enough for us & wonderful they are. They're pretty good in the bird feeders too. The large orchard? below the house here doesn't really get harvested. Anyone who is passing simply helps themselves. We often see groups of kids collecting - but I suspect the majority go to the boar, jays & squirrels. I guess there's such a surplus already locally, that noone really wants to make the effort to do anything commercial with them.

7cats wrote:Iv got about 20kg from my wallnut tree does anyone have any ideas what to do with them?

Use them to make pesto with whatever leafy veg/herbs you have - you can freeze pesto too, because of the amount of oil involved. Make walnut butter - I've not tried this but I make almond butter and it tastes better than the peanut variety. It's Christmas soon so add chopped ones to cake, mincemeat and pud. Or you could maybe make candied or walnut squares to give as gifts. As has been mentioned, they go really well added to salads, but they are also good with pasta, nut loaves/balls and cakes. If you pick them when they are still green, you can make nocino - a lethal sweet and spicy liqueur.