#TRANSPLANTING BLACK WALNUT SEEDLINGS FREE#
#TRANSPLANTING BLACK WALNUT SEEDLINGS CRACK#

#TRANSPLANTING BLACK WALNUT SEEDLINGS FREE#

I think a light soil-less medium like perlite, sand etc might a good idea for letting the walnuts sprout in peace free of any insect pests or mold and damp off. There's no need to pry off the shell of the entire inner seed, there's a high risk of destroying the entire seed and splitting it in the half if you do that.

#TRANSPLANTING BLACK WALNUT SEEDLINGS CRACK#

As for cracking the nut shell without destroying the inner nut/seed/germ I recommend gently tapping the pointy end with a hand sledge or hammer until you crack the pointy end open, do not use excessive force and just let the weight of the hammer/hand sledge crack it open for you, that will definitely not harm the inner seed. I got seedlings in less than a month from the moment I picked fresh seeds up from the ground. I did just like in the video but took my nuts out after 11-12 days to gently crack them open in the pointy end and saw that they had all already germinated, I probably didn't even need the fridge step. But if you plant them outdoors you need to seriously protect them against squirrels, mice, other rodents and birds because they love digging walnuts up and other nut seeds to eat them otherwise!Ĭheck this video out to see a very easy and simple way of making walnuts germinate: If you keep them outdoors in the shell over winter that will help to protect them while they germinate and they will come up as seedlings in the spring ready to grow for the entire season, natural predators in the soil will also help keeping insect pests away I guess. Sadly several of the very few nuts of a particular local, extra hardy tree that I had were destroyed by millipedes and fungus gnat larvae in the soil before I realized what was going on. I did it just like in this video I will link down below and have so far had 100% success rate when it came to germination, growing roots etc indoors. You don't actually have to stratify walnuts it seems, if you just soak them for 24-48 hours and gently crack the shell around the pointy end where the germ is they will quickly grow into trees within just a few weeks of planting.

I guess if you prune the tree in a certain way you can keep it on the smaller end and it would still do fine if not put into too much of an exposed location. In commercial orchards they usually graft specific walnut varieties on rootstocks grown from seed of a particular variety that has good properties when grown from seed, but from what I've heard cloning particular rootstocks with cuttings also takes place in some areas.

It's definitely possible to grow walnuts from cuttings, it's just not that easy compared to many other plants and allegedly they grow much weaker roots compared to those grown from seed. Post back and let us know.īut if you want a clone of that tree, a better option would be to graft scions from that tree onto rootstock of another Persian Walnut tree, or a Black Walnut tree. If you can successfully do it, that would be wonderful. Regarding trying to clone the tree by taking cuttings, I don't think it can be done. I think, by this time, the smell of the nut has disappeared and the squirrels ignore the young trees. That was the only way that worked for me.Īfter the first year, the chicken wire can come off the following Spring.

The trees were in five gallons planter pots and each one got a cone of chicken wire wrapped around it.

One way I found to protect the trees from squirrels was to wrap the tree in a chicken wire teepee. Even if the tree is four months old and 1 foot tall, squirrels will nip off the tree at the base and dig up the nut, killing the tree for the sake of that nut. Even after the nut germinates, if squirrels smell them, they will dig up the nut and take them. They will still need to be protected against squirrels for at least the first year. In the Spring, take them out and plant them in pots. The safest place to do this is in your refrigerator. Basically, they need to go through a period of cold temperature for about 100 days or they won't germinate. If you do manage to collect a few walnuts before the squirrels get to them, they need to go through a period of cold temperature stratification. Walnuts have deep taproots, so they don't like being transplanted.

Squirrels are notorious for cleaning off nut trees, but they also forget where they hide all their nuts, so I am surprised you don't have at least a few young trees coming up every Spring. Your photo indicates a regular Persian Walnut tree. I've propagated Walnut trees, and documented it in my blog, with photos.

Transplanting black walnut seedlings