Black walnuts

[44man]

I use a pooper scooper to pick them up but ours are so big. I get 3 or 4 in it to dump in a bucket. Is there a better way to pick them up?

[Iowa Fox]

Here's what we use. Works slick and makes short work of picking up nuts. Just keep the grass mowed short when the nuts start to fall.

http://www.nutwizard.com/

http://gardenharvesters.com/Category/nutrollers?gclid=CO-4rJqas8gCFYk7aQodVp0D_w

We use the big one for walnuts and our hickory nuts. Smaller one for accorns.

Not much to pickup as the squirrel population is out of control. Can't shoot enough or trap enough to even make a dent in the population.

[kfarm]

Got one in my front yard. Been picking up a 5 gal bucket of walnuts every day now for a week but got 10 gal this morning. Hope they all fall soon. If it weren't for it being the only tree in my front yard I'd take a saw to it. They do make good targets thrown into my lake and once made a potato gun for them. Durn thing will go thru a 1/2" plywood at 30' also crush up the green ones put them in a burlap sack toss into the lake, makes fishing a little bit more fun not that I'd ever do it.

[fryboy]

Used to sell them when I was a kid and is my favorite of the various nuts ( peanut being second hazlenut third )
Can't help much on the easiest way to pick them up except if you don't eat them or sell them "free for the picking " add in Craigslist may work

Edit to add ...that nut wizard is related to our brass picker uppers lolz

[shooterg]

5 trees around the house. Wife hates 'em. Pretty constant "thud thud thud" on the roof this time of year. I gather enough to put away a few bags cracked with my old Foley walnut cracker. They taste good but it's a LOT of work ! Always been curious to see how they're processed commercially.

[Jeff Michel]

Getting dressed this morning at 0430 and just about went outside to see what this hollow thwack sound was every couple minutes. It dawned on me it was walnuts ricocheting off the propane tank just outside the open window.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Black Walnuts sell all day long at the local farmer's market for $5 for a 5 gallon bucket. Yeah, it's not much $$$, but it's better than hauling them to the City's compost site (many people do that, that's where I'd get them to sell at the market :-P back when I was a vendor there, also, I had a couple locl townspeople who had trees, didn't want to pick up nuts, I'd offer my services to clean them up from under their tree for a small fee).

I prefer Butternuts. I 'had' a Butternut tree in my yard, those nuts bring more money...I think I got $20 per 5 gallon bucket last time I had some to sell (before the tree died).

It's funny, when that tree was alive and productive, I could never shoot all the squirrels in my yard...I'd shoot a few everyday, some others would always show up the next day ...Nut fed squirrels are good eatin' ...BUT, Now that tree is gone, and the squirrels are few and far between.

[shooterg]

The squirrels around the house are very fat - between walnuts and stealing cat food they do very well .

[crowbuster]

bumper crop round here, I use the nut wheel for hickories, hull em with boot if didnt pop out when hit the ground. Alway used one of those long reach grabbers for the walnuts, then hull em with my blackhawk corn sheller. Worms bad this year in the hickories, some trees 50% loss when floating them. Finished a few hogs out on acorns, makes sum great meat. Would love to hear how other guys process walnuts as well

[cattleskinner]

Pay a local kid a penny a nut to put them in a bucket, or pay by the bucket full? Another good trick for the hulls if you want to go fishing. Once they turn black, fill the bottom of a bucket a few inches full, then fill the rest of the bucket with water. Make a dark water "soup", which is then poured over a 3-4 foot section of the yard. Worms will come right to the top to get away from the acids from the walnut hulls. The only problem is you have to use the worms within a day or two, as they tend to die if not washed off really well.

[Col4570]

The Walnut timber could be a good source of gunstocks if the Trees are cut down and allowed to season.

[hoosierlogger]

I have the kids help me pile them up in the yard, then we take turns running over them with the garden tractor. They love it and the reward is them getting to run the tractor. We usually put up about 2 5 gallon buckets each year. Then I spend countless hours In the woodshop cracking them. Kids are no where to be found then.

[JWFilips]

Any one here pick beech nuts? From the time I started hunting at 11 I always gathered up a bunch of these to take home when our Beagle was running a rabbit ( he would chase him down a long time before bringing them back ..so I had the time to pick) Interesting flavor especially if you roasted them in an iron fry pan

[daengmei]

Used to eat the beech nuts as a kid, they were so many around the bigger trees. Loved them. This,

The sweet seeds are very edible and can be crushed into a butter. The nuts have a low amount of fagin which is slightly toxic and is found in the skin of the kernel (roasting allows that skin to be easily rubbed off.)
from http://www.eattheweeds.com/the-all-american-beech/
Never seemed to bother me, maybe it's hard to eat enough of them being so small?

[CLAYPOOL]

Donate/sell to your local FORESTRY program with your state. ILLINOIS used to buy them for there programs. Every few years they want them form other trees to have different genetics. You can also pour them out with permission in some ones woods. We hulled them with a hand crank corn Sheller. Please supervise little hands and fingers. Those old Sheller's are dangerous, BUT FUN.

[StolzerandSons]

My method involves kids(grandkids, nieces, nephews, etc.) under 5 preferred(they aren't real sure of the value of a dollar yet). A penny a piece, it serves two purposes, it gets the walnuts cleaned up and gives me a break for at least an hour to recover from playing with the kids. And of course the kids are pretty happy to have a couple bucks.

[Frank46]

Get some visqueen in rolls and lay it flat under the trees. All it is sheep plastic. when full roll them up in one corner and shovel into containers. Frank

[Col4570]

Walnuts ,I love them,I could eat them till the Cows come home.I like a few sprinkled on my Porridge in the morning.

[Teddy (punchie)]

We are all going nuts , LOL !!!

Enjoy them while you can as walnut TCD.

[Moonman]

Out of season, the NUT WHEELS can be used to PICK UP BRASS CASES.

[fryboy]

Walnuts ,I love them,I could eat them till the Cows come home.I like a few sprinkled on my Porridge in the morning.

you do know of course that black walnuts are a bit different than what is often termed the english walnut ? ( the walnut meat most often sold in stores ) black walnut has a slightly different taste that i can only term as more "earthy" , it also (as noted by a few above ) has a much much tougher hull ( ok ok so that's my understatement of the day )

[44man]

Looks good. We love black walnut meat and carol cracks many. We have a nut cracker that does the job. This year is crazy with most 3" or larger.
Walnuts on pumpkin pie with whipped cream is heaven.
I don't know if the roller is any better then the pooper scooper.

[fryboy]

3" and crazy ... ye olde saw is that the thicker the hull on the nuts the longer and colder the winter will be ...let's hope that they're wrong !!
mmm cream such as one of me fav 3 flavors ? black walnut ice cream ? ( dang that makes me hungry and i just had lunch [doh] )

[skeettx]

Dad used to use the Black Walnut husks for fishing.
He put them in a tow sack and beat them up with a limb
and then weighted the bag and threw it into a small pond.
The fish floated up and he snagged them.

Mike

p.s. Why is it called a tow sack?
Probably because it is made of tow which are the waste fibers of flax or hemp that you don't use for making proper cloth.

He he he , I like youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M35erdt_r7E

[Col4570]

I read somewhere that Abraham Lincoln could Crack walnuts between his forfinger and thumb.

[Col4570]

Fryboy ,thanks for that info,I had no idea that it was a different species.i must confess I know nothing of Black Walnuts.We live and learn.Regards.

[fryboy]

you're welcome ! i wasnt sure if you was aware or not but wanted to make sure , i'm also not sure if it's a good thing or not as you dont know what you're missing ( danged double edged sword lolz ) everyone doesnt care for them ( as noted above ) but those who do ...really do ! ( including me lolz ) in addition to the slightly earthier taste to me they also seem a wee bit richer and the flavor is actually kind of complex , the hulls as noted are harder/thicker but for those whom like them well worth the extra effort ! dont get me wrong the english walnuts are also good ( and way easier to crack open ) and usually have a slightly larger meat in the center

[Rockydog]

I grew up on a Wisconsin farm that was loaded with Black Walnut, Butternut and Hickory trees. We used to pick black walnuts by the pick up load. Pick up boxes were smaller then, with the fenders on the outside but still held 20-25 burlap bags full. We had a fairly long limestone gravel drive on the farm. We'd just pour the walnuts and butternuts out on the drive and run over them with the driveway traffic for about 10 days. They were completely hulled with very few smashed even when running wagon loads of corn pulled by tractors over them. Then we had to pick them up a second time. They'd go to the basement where we'd crack a couple of ice cream pails full at a time and take them to the kitchen table for picking. Quite a lengthy process. Cracking butternuts was the worst. More than one black thumb or finger resulted from a missed whack on a butter nut. RD

[snowwolfe]

I think I love every type of nut there is EXCEPT black walnuts, yuck. Lol
Of course it might have something to do with my father who made me shell them so he could sell them and keep all the money.

[Plate plinker]

Black walnuts are my absolute favorite tree nut. I make my wife put them in every cookie she makes.

[Iowa Fox]

My M-I-L now gone was into walnuts in a big way. She ran them thru the corn sheller to get to hulls off and then put them in an old wringer style washing machine to was the black goo off. After a couple rinses they went on her 4x8 drying trays for a couple months in the machine shed. Not uncommon for her to do 10-15 5 gal buckets of washed/dryed nuts a year. My wife might do 1 to 2 five gal buckets a year. The walnuts aren't bad but give me hickory nuts any day. The squirrels won't touch a walnut here until the hickorys are gone. My wife uses a big gear driven nut cracker thats probably as old if not older than she is. Makes quick work of the cracken business.

[44man]

I watched deer eat hickory nuts. I don't know what they do with shells. Squirrels have been going crazy in the yard. We have only grays here, can't figure out why they are not stained from the husks.
My woods is full of walnut trees and paw paw trees. Everything loves the paw paw fruit.

[pmer]

I just had my first go with Black Walnuts and they are good. My MIL has a few trees and they never really did anything with them but pick up and toss them away.

I thought well might as well give it a try. I picked a bucket full and took them home and got on the google. I took a few that had loose skins and took that off. To clean them I used compressed air to blow the access skin material off. Then baked them at 300* for about 25 minutes.

That seemed to work good. Is it better to air dry them?

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Coincidentally, yesterday, I was watching my elderly neighbor and his millennial son (who lives in the basement and who I've never seen do any yard work :shock: ) picking up Black Walnuts...looks like a bumper crop, 8 garbage bags full from their one tree...I could see the son was NOT happy.

[Wayne Smith]

Quick story, since I am diabetic and LOML is allergic to wheat and milk - I created my own diabetic, wheatless, milkless pancake mix. Because I need protein I grind up nuts to add to it. A few years ago Sam's started carrying black walnut meats, seasonally. I buy enough for the year in the fall - because the first year I ran out. Made the pancakes with European walnuts. "What is WRONG with these pancakes!?" was the first thing out of her mouth when tasting them. I now make sure I have enough for the year.

[country gent]

We used to reset the hand crank corn sheller to remove the husks from our black walnuts as long as they were still firm and solid it worked good if they were soft and greasy not as good. The husks when greasy would stain really bad also.

[vzerone]

Jon I have a bumper crop of them too this year. Unfortunately I don't do anything with them. Now my wife loves nutroll and makes it often, but she won't use black walnuts. She liked them with English walnut.

[Boaz]

As a kid we gathered em in tow sacks . Threw em under the porch or anywhere that stayed dry for a few months to dry . The husk comes off easy . Mom loved to put em in baked goods . Us kids used a claw hammer to crack and then pick the nuts out . A form of torture for children , like shelling peas .

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I really like English walnuts, and each year, I order some directly from a farmer in CA.
I wish I liked the black walnuts, I just don't have a taste for them.
Black walnut trees are plentiful around my area and I have access to many...in fact, about 15 years ago, when I had a sideline selling excess garden produce at the farmers market, I'd help a few different neighbors cleanup their yard and haul the black walnuts away, and sell them whole/fresh at the farmers market for $5 for a 5 gallon bucketful. Back then others were selling hand "processed" black walnut meats for about $10 per lb. All I know is, I'd rather sell ten buckets full of whole/fresh nuts for $50, then process and sell 5 lbs of nut meats for $50 :coffee:

[crowbuster]

Amen to that Jonb. Lots o nuts again this year. We love hickory nut pies as well as black walnut pies. And ground walnuts on pan fried pork chops. ooooweeeeee. Whats others favorite way to eat em ?

[Boaz]

Ice cream !

[RGrosz]

My Grandma used to gather black walnuts out in the timber every year. Then while her and Grandpa were watching TV they would shell them. She had the best cookie recipe that used them I ever tasted. We got the recipe when she died and my wife made them. They didn't taste right they were good but there was something missing. Talked it over with her and she showed me the recipe, and all she had wrote down was walnuts. Went to a local shop and bought some Black walnuts and instead of using margarine talked her into using lard like she does in pie crusts. That was it, She thought they were better. Now if they weren't so hard to make, we'd have them all the time.
She's starting to add black walnuts to a lot of things. It definably changes the flavor of most.
Rob

[MaryB]

I miss the guy who used to sell some pecan nuts here every year... forget who it was..

[SSGOldfart]

I miss the guy who used to sell some pecan nuts here every year... forget who it was..

How many do you want? I picked up our first gallon this morning.

[w5pv]

Never had much luck fishing with them,probably because we didn't have enough concentration of the green walnuts

[wgr]

how do you guys get the small bits of hull out

[skeettx]

C-4 plastique

in reality, a nut pick sitting on the porch with friends
The little hull bits sure are bitter

Mike

[Thundarstick]

I've got one of these https://www.lehmans.com/product/steel-nutcracker?show=all

It is the best black walnut and hickory nut cracker I've tried. Cracked from the ends it usually breaks the nut into 4 pieces, then I use a modified 6 inch pair of side cutter pliers to nipp the shell off the meats. One nut usually yealds 4 intact kernels from each nut. There isn't a chocolate nut brownie, blondie, or cookie recipe that isn't better using black walnuts. I'm going out to pick up some now! Free food at that!

[mold maker]

My Granny made the absolute best black walnut cake I ever had. She only made it on special occassions and I never missed one.
At least for me, accumulating enough to use cracking with a hammer, is a lost cause.

[Multigunner]

Our trees make walnuts that have a very strong taste that I don't care for. Also since losing my last molars I don't eat nuts these days.

Anyway I've begun a new batch of natural walnut stain. Been some years since I made any.

I take whole walnuts with hull intact and seal them in a plastic bag and leave them where they get some sun.
After a few weeks the thick syrupy stain gathers in the bottom of the bag and around the inside. This is the best of the stain, with a very dark brown hue. To apply to wood I soak a rag in rubbing alcohol and wipe some stain off the inside of the bag then apply to the wood. The more the stain is thinned and the more applications of the thinned stain the more even the finished product will be.

I also take the remaining nuts and put these in a wire strainer over a pot . I pour scalding hot water over the nuts to draw out the last of the stain. I then leave the mixture in a old baking pan to dry in the sun, leaving a crust on the metal. I apply as mentioned earlier. Stain from this method has a lighter and slightly reddish hue.

Next time I may mix both types together to see what sort of hue results.


As for clearing away nuts on the ground my dog loves chasing them when I chuck them towards the back fence. I bounce them a bit to mimic a bounding cottontail.

I prefer to pile the nuts up along the back fence because the neighborhood squirrels dispose of them for me.

When I was a youngster I made a cannon using a capped piece of pipe. I'd load a fresh walnut in its husk over an M80 or cherry bomb and send it sailing down range. The neighborhood is now pretty thick with walnut trees in that direction.

[swamp]

I would like to try making some stain from the hulls. Anyone have a medium or large frb of hulls to sell?
swamp

[Thundarstick]

Our trees make walnuts that have a very strong taste

That stain leaches into the nut and gives that strong taste. The secret? Pluck them up green, scuff the hull off the nuts with your boots, then rinse in running water untill out runs clear, and spread then out to dry. Crack at your convenience after that. I prepped about 100 this evening.

[Iowa Fox]

Our trees have very good tasting walnut meats. I've got a winter supply hulled, washed and drying for my wife to crack this winter. The rest are going to get hauled down to the creek in the timber. In two days the squirrels have them gone. We're getting a pretty good pile of shellbark hickory nuts on the drying screen this year which I prefer to the walnuts. My wife cracks them in January and has found the meats shrink a little from the shell making things much easier. She uses a big gear driven cast iron nut cracker her old uncle gave her years ago when he got to old to do nuts anymore. It has a cupped holder for the nut and a tin shield you lower around the nut to control shell splatter when they crack. No pecans this year, the Blue Jays get them every year.

[yeahbub]

I haven't set aside the time to crack walnuts in a few years, but what Multigunner writes about extracting the stain sounds very interesting, but my purpose would be for use as old-timey ink for dip pens, letter writing, calligraphic lettering, etc. I have used walnut stain for it before and, depending on concentration, it leaves a fine sepia tone on the paper. Paper of good density will leave behind a sharp, shiny wet line the width of the pen point which doesn't blot or spread out. If it does, either use different paper or add Gum Arabic to the ink to slightly thicken it by degrees until it behaves properly. Crushed poke berries also make good ink, but they're toxic, so keep it away from the kids.

As for taste, hickories and pecans are just hard to stop eating, but mom used to make a nut cake heavy with ground walnuts, coffee and chocolate. Moist and rich, it was never around long.

[smokeywolf]

Dad used to buy walnut burl stock blanks from an outfit back east. They'd been seasoned for 10 to 20 years when he bought them.

When I was a kid we moved to a somewhat rural area about 60 miles North of Los Angeles. There was a good sized walnut orchard about 1-1/2 miles from the house. They dozed that orchard in about in the late '60s. Wish I'd been smart enough to ask the land owner if I could buy a few small pieces of burl.

Not allowed to eat nuts anymore. Sure miss pecan pie. Now the only thing I use nut woods for is smoking meats.

[MaryB]

Pecan and hickory nut shells are good for smoking too! Toss on the charcoal or in a foil packet on your gas burner to add a nice smoke flavor to anything.

[Iowa Fox]

Pecan and hickory nut shells are good for smoking too! Toss on the charcoal or in a foil packet on your gas burner to add a nice smoke flavor to anything.

Good one Mary. Never thought of that.

[Silverseas]

We had walnut tree on the playground of my grade school in Omaha. You can imagine the mischief we go into with all that ammo.

[pmer]

I have a drying question about the Black Walnuts. I picked a couple buckets 3 weeks ago and hulled them. I figured they would crack by now after air drying for three weeks. I had them in the garage where it was cool and dry. The last week or so the temperature was dropping close to freezing and below freezing though.

If I understand correctly they should crack to indicate they're dry enough storage? Maybe they need more time in the basement where it isn't so cold?

[Thundarstick]

Crack one and see if the goody is pulled away from the wooden hull. If it is, crack away, if not, dry a little longer. I never noticed them really crack from drying, and have kept them in the hull for years in a cool dry place.

[Plate plinker]

Black walnuts don’t seem to crack on their own.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

Black walnuts don’t seem to crack on their own.

when the Squirrels bury them in my garden, they start cracking (as they germinate, LOL)...then the dang squirrels dig 'em up and make a mess...it seems the squirrels in my neighborhood dislike to do the work to crack 'em open.

[pmer]

Thanks for the information! I used a channellock pliers to crack 20 or more and had only a few that weren't dry from end to end. Now we have Black Walnut scones with fresh cranberries in the oven.

[mold maker]

I had most of an old shopping cart full with a window screen wired fast on top, till the squirrels found them. When I went to the garage to get some to crack, all I had left were hulls. The smart alecks ate the goodies through the cart wires.

[JonB_in_Glencoe]

I had most of an old shopping cart full with a window screen wired fast on top, till the squirrels found them. When I went to the garage to get some to crack, all I had left were hulls. The smart alecks ate the goodies through the cart wires.

I had a prolific Butternut tree, til about 10 years ago, when it died and I cut it down. The Butternut is quite similar to the black walnut...I think the trees are closely related. The Squirrels love them both. While the outer hull of the butternut doesn't "stain" like a Black walnut, the Butternut hull, when fresh, is sticky with the stickiest stuff that smells like eucalyptus...it doesn't wash off, I'd wear gloves to pick the nuts, then throw away the gloves.

I would put the nuts in a cage made from two old window screens and leave them out in the snowy Minnesota weather for the hulls to dry up and fall off the shell, if I didn't watch close, the squirrels would chew through the screens. I miss that Butternut tree, it provided more squirrel meat than anyone could imagine.

[Plate plinker]

when the Squirrels bury them in my garden, they start cracking (as they germinate, LOL)...then the dang squirrels dig 'em up and make a mess...it seems the squirrels in my neighborhood dislike to do the work to crack 'em open.

You must have liberal progressive socialist Squirrels.

[MaryB]

Pellet rifle and a full stew pot!


I had a prolific Butternut tree, til about 10 years ago, when it died and I cut it down. The Butternut is quite similar to the black walnut...I think the trees are closely related. The Squirrels love them both. While the outer hull of the butternut doesn't "stain" like a Black walnut, the Butternut hull, when fresh, is sticky with the stickiest stuff that smells like eucalyptus...it doesn't wash off, I'd wear gloves to pick the nuts, then throw away the gloves.

I would put the nuts in a cage made from two old window screens and leave them out in the snowy Minnesota weather for the hulls to dry up and fall off the shell, if I didn't watch close, the squirrels would chew through the screens. I miss that Butternut tree, it provided more squirrel meat than anyone could imagine.