Unilingual at the Experimental Farm

One of the most splendid public institutions in Eastern Ontario is the Experimental Farm in Ottawa.  Originally conceived as a model farm to demonstrate developments in agriculture such as winter wheat, the farm has continued to fulfill its mandate long after progress should have passed it by.  The farm is the city’s jewel, an outpost of spacious greenery in a bustling urban landscape.

Walnut grower Neil Thomas has accumulated data on most stands of black walnuts in Eastern Ontario, and in his opinion the trees on Experimental Farm property near the Civic Hospital are the best he has seen.  I dropped by to gather some seed after a morning appointment.  Staff encourage the gathering of nuts from these trees, and Ottawa friends have reported seeing tree lovers stuffing the green nuts into shopping bags and baskets, laying in their supply for winter while the squirrels scold from above.

After filling all of the grocery bags I could find in my vehicle, I decided to venture over to the Arboretum in search of a shagbark hickory.  Leeds County Stewardship Coordinator  Martin Streit found one in our woodlot, but it’s a small, scrawny specimen, locked in a death struggle with a towering walnut and unlikely to survive.  Martin told me about the edible nuts this strain of hickory produces, so I thought I might try to plant a few if I could find seeds.

Not quite knowing where to look, I did the logical thing:  I flagged down a golf cart and asked the driver.  She directed me to the Friends of the Experimental Farm building, in the Arboretum just off the traffic circle south of Dow’s Lake.  I wandered through a corridor of offices until someone looked out an open door.  I asked if they had any shagbark hickory in the area.  Blank look.  An obvious language problem.  I had no idea how to translate my request, but the pleasant-looking middle-aged man turned to the younger man beside him with a quizzical look. “Carya, I think. Let me look it up.”  With me in tow he dashed down the corridor to a sort of closet, where he started rifling through a set of index cards.  “Yep, carya ovata, not carya cordiformis. There’s one just outside, across the parking lot.  Would you like me to show you?”

Away we went out a side door, and across an open space to a beautifully manicured park with a large shagbark hickory as its centerpiece.  The man looked at a tag implanted in the bark on an ingenious spring system anchored by two long brass screws.  It listed the tree’s Latin name, as well as the translation into the vulgate, “shagbark hickory” and the year of the tree’s planting.

I asked how often it produces seeds.  The guy didn’t know, but pulled down an overhanging branch and showed me some.  “Go ahead and pick any you can reach.  Check back with me if you need anything.”  I offered my surprised thanks, and away he went.

Pockets bulging with hickory nuts, I stumbled back across the parking lot, only to encounter the lady on the golf cart again.  I thanked her for the directions and asked if they had any butternuts with seeds in the Arboretum.  She gave directions to a couple of trees, but saw my blank look every time she used the word “walk”.  Hey, my pockets were bulging with hickory nuts!

Before long we were gliding over the lawns in an electric, four-passenger Club Car, her personal ride at the Experimental Farm, where she is a head hand, Ornamental Gardens division.  To my dismay I have lost her name.  (Madam, if you read this, please post a comment with your name, and that of the other guy, O.K?  I need them for a Review Mirror column. Thanks.)  Down a grassy hill we zoomed, fetching up at the bottom next to a small aesculus glabra, or Ohio Buckeye.  That’s American for a chestnut, I guess.  I picked up a nut on the ground.  She nodded, so I tore the thick, spongy husk away, to reveal a bright, chestnut-coloured, uh, chestnut.  Cool.  She told me you can eat them, as long as you don’t overdo it, at which point they become poisonous because of the high concentration of tannin in the nut.

Off we went on our quest for the perfect caryocar nuciferum, or butternut tree.  She stopped at two more carya ovata to show me how the young ones grow.

Conversation veered to heartnuts, so the cart took a detour through a tall stand of spruces to the juglans section.  I knew that one.  Juglans nigra is the black walnut.  What I hadn’t known is how many subspecies of black walnut they have growing at the Arboretum.

A large juglans ailantifolia – that’s a heartnut – graced a small knoll next to a dwarf black walnut and a magnificent full-sized black walnut planted in 1885, according to the tag on the trunk.

I explained my desire to learn how to graft heartnut branches onto black walnut rootstock.  My guide led me to believe that it might not be hard to time my grafting with some pruning of the heartnut tree at the Arboretum.

Off to the butternut tree.  We passed below a tall bluff with a carefully maintained grassy slope to the river below.  Sitting on the railing of a parking lot at the top of the hill were a number of dog owners, tossing frizbees and tennis balls down the slope for their eager retrievers who didn’t mind at all having to race up and down the steep hill.  The Arboretum has a leashes-optional policy and the dog owners flock to the exquisite park with their charges.

We arrived at the butternut tree and lo and behold, there were butternuts on the ground under it!  I’d never seen this many butternuts in one place before in my life.  The squirrels nab them first thing in our area.  I guess the grays in the park have so many hickories they haven’t had time yet for butternuts.  Whoever mowed the lawn had kindly moved a good quantity of the nuts into a pile out of the way next to the trunk

My guide encouraged me to take them and plant them, so I headed back up the hill to the office and my vehicle with a bagful of butternuts for seed, as well as the hickories, two buckeyes, and one pecan.

My V.I.P. tour of the Arboretum could hardly have been more pleasant or informative.  This large, friendly park is truly the jewel in the crown of Ottawa’s green spaces, and I encourage tree-lovers to visit frequently.

Something interesting about walnut logs

This week I have skidded a number of smaller black walnut logs out of the woodlot as I found them during the walnut harvest.  They had sat where they fell for two summers after the improvement cut of the winter of 2006-2007.  When I unloaded them off the trailer the bark peeled easily and thus the moderate scuffing on one end from dragging behind the loader did not amount to a problem for George Sheffield and his band mill.

The surprise was when we cut the first slabs.  Generally a walnut log shows a distressing band of bright white sapwood on the first cut, and it seems to go half-way through the log.  Not so with these specimens which had sat for two summers.  The sapwood was barely detectable.  George speculated that the pigments must blend or else the white pigment fades over time if the logs aren’t sawn immediately.

The logs sawed very easily and produced fine, straight boards and planks.  It’s not hard to see why cabinetmakers regard walnut as the king of the cabinet woods.  My immediate objective was to get some material from which to build a bannister for the stone house.  We cut three 2 1/4″ planks from one log which should fill the bill, though I don’t know if Bet will wait three years for them to dry or if I’ll have to bang out a temporary railing out of pine.

Picking walnuts

Just in from another serene two-hour session picking walnuts.  Third day in a row.  I like it as well as fishing. It’s harmless, good exercise, non-capital-intensive*, and it’s fun as long as I don’t think about the laughable dollar value of the crop.  Maybe the Canadian way will be to get a grant to do the actual paying <grin>.

Update:  October 15,  2008

I’m still picking walnuts.  After taking a trailer-load to Neil for hulling I planned to get on with other work, but I keep drifting back to the woodlot, and before long another oil drum is full.  The fitness aspect cannot be ignored:  I can now fill an oil drum with nuts picked from the ground as easily as I could a tub when the season began.  It’s nice back there in the woods, and the work is anything but stressful.

This morning I spent a couple of hours developing a new process for separating the shells from cracked nuts.  I’ll write more on this after I’ve consulted my stakeholders, but I’m quite pleased with myself at the moment.

*Update: October 1, 2008

I may have spoken too soon about the lack of capital intensity required for walnut picking. Somehow in the last few days I have obtained a new Polaris Ranger TM, presumably the better to enable me to haul walnuts back to the house.

Update:  Sept 28th, 2008

I must be getting into better condition.  I picked an oil drum full of nuts today without undue strain.

Production was helped by a series of heavy drops from four isolated trees.  The only thing the trees had in common was a pool of guano underneath the heavily-bearing branch on each.  I guess Zeke the red tailed hawk hasn’t gotten any better at his landings:  he’s shaking the nuts off the trees when he stops.  There are no, repeat no, squirrels in evidence.  Zeke’s rule is law.

Toads and tree frogs abound on the forest floor.

With about three oil-drums of nuts ready for hulling, it’s really time to think about finding a market for the product.  There will be lots of seed walnuts ready for December planting from this harvest.

I also have a couple of bushel of last year’s nuts all ready for cracking, and will consider offers for the whole nuts from gourmet cooks and pastry chefs.  Black walnuts impart an exquisite flavour to cookies and other baked goods.

Update:  Sept 18th, 2008

For the second day I have run across a good walnut log felled by the crew who did the improvement cut in the winter of 2007.  This makes two clear logs over 16′ which I have found in remote parts of the stand.  Neither is very large at the top, maybe 9″ versus 12″ at the butt, but I should be able to get enough material to build a good bannister for the stone house out of them.  It actually only takes one long two by four, but I’m confident I’ll want many oversized pieces from which to make my selection on something as central as a bannister.  The Massey Harris 35 doesn’t usually get treated as roughly as this, but I muscled it over a few logs and brush piles, then dragged the logs backwards up a slight rise by lifting the butt end by a chain attached to the hook on the loader.  At the worst possible location today the transmission locked in reverse, but it wiggled into first without much trouble.

The logging costs nothing but time and wear on the old Massey Ferguson, but it produces valuable lumber.  Of course I wouldn’t have found the logs without going into the grove looking for walnuts, so perhaps I should revise my position on the uneconomic nature of the nut harvest.  The incidental catch of lumber is quite good.

A note on walnut sprouts

Note to visitors:

The actual purpose of this blog is to disseminate information about the culture of black walnuts, so please feel free to ask questions by entering comments in the space below each article. I’m no expert, but Neil Thomas is, and we have access to the library and the many years of experience of the Northern Nutgrowers Association, as well.

Rod

Neil

May 14th the new seedlings started popping up. They are still at it in the new field. Some of the early ones lost some leaves to a late frost, as did the new plantings of resistant butternut, but all have recovered from the setback.

I checked your earlier response in which you indicated that normal sprouting time is early to mid-June. I’m wondering if the early risers are from cracked nuts from last fall’s runs through the huller before the tolerances were set correctly. I tried to sort the damaged nuts out, but it proved too time-consuming, so I just dropped them into the ground along with the others.

Almost none showed signs of mould, most likely due to my use of toxic levels of potassium metabisulfide. To check for the viability of cracked nuts, I guess the only thing would be to dig up the seeds in a non-producing hill and see if they are 1) cracked and spoiled or 2) intact and goofing off, waiting for next year or 3) intact and slow to sprout.

After the Eureka! moment, of course, one must stop to ponder the potential value of early-sprouting nuts.

Much growth this week with the heavy rains and warm weather.

Rod

Update: June 13, 2008

A drive over most of the new plantation showed that about 90% of the hills have one or two seedlings growing at the moment, though some are little red shoots and others are sizable plants which already dwarf the yearlings transplanted in early in the season to replace seeds stolen by squirrels. At this point I’d have to say that the fertility of the cracked kernels is no longer in question. How vital the sprouts turn out to be is another question.

As usual, the grays didn’t take many of the nuts far. About six feet from the hills, lots of volunteer seedlings are growing right where I need to mow.

The apple and pear trees in the orchard are loaded, as are two young walnut trees adjacent to them. The older trees nearer to the woodlot are less willing to commit this early. I had noticed that last year and concluded they were taking the year off, but they produced good, late crops.

Update: June 18, 2008

With the aid of Joseph Booth, a summer visitor, I filled the empty hills in the new field with transplanted sprouts from hills with an extra seedling. After a steady overnight rain the ground was nice and damp, so we took advantage of the weather and put in a total of three hours at the task. There are still many hills with double sprouts, but there are very few now without any.

Just wait: in another week I’ll be writing here complaining that I now have a lot of hills with three walnuts growing out of them. Some hills in the display field have up to five seedlings, after last year’s overplanting. My mayhem with the string trimmer had little long-term effect upon the extra seedlings, though it did reduce numbers somewhat for the display at the plowing match. Roundup or transplantation will take care of them eventually.

Anybody want a hundred or so seedlings for immediate transplant? They’re healthy little devils.

Update July 3, 2008:

The Roundup burn in the new plantation is now complete, and the seedlings have recovered from the minor setback. I sprayed a 3′ square around each seedling. Afterward, a few low-lying leaves grew black and spotted and the overall size and strength of the plants seemed to diminish for a week or so. They seemed less green and vibrant as the vegetation around them dwindled and died. Now they’re coming back with new growth, though, and looking stronger (though less pretty) than before. Some sprouts are still rising. In the whole field I don’t think I killed a single walnut, so my skill with the backpack sprayer seems to have improved.

To date only one of Joseph’s transplants has died: it was in the lowest point of the back field and it flooded out during heavy rains. The rest appear nearly as lively as the other seedlings near them.

Update August 4, 2008:

The new sprouts seem to have done their growing for this year, as few are showing much new growth even though they are receiving abundant rainfall. I suspect the plants are devoting their energy to root development, though, as at some point the seedlings develop the tap roots and become much more difficult to transplant. Last year in late August the seedlings responded to my watering efforts with new growth after a lull at this time of year, but then the crusted snow last winter broke most of the new stems off and they had to start again anyway.

The seeds planted in the fall of 2005 are growing very well this year, with the odd one exceeding six feet in height now. Perhaps because of the rapid growth, the branches are very brittle, and I have to mow very carefully around the larger plants lest I break their limbs.

The middle-aged walnut trees in and around the woodlot are now showing substantial nut development on most trees. As usual, I see no nuts on the butternuts.

They’re sprouting!

It seems early yet, but some of last fall’s walnut seeds are just raising their heads today after last night’s light rain. The Roundup-cleared spots in the southward-facing field must collect more sunlight than the grassy turf of earlier years. Now if the crows don’t decide they enjoy walnut salad, we may be all right. The black birds are spending a suspicious amount of time on the ground in the five-acre plot, but so far I think they’re just eating bird’s eggs and gorging on earthworms.

One thing I learned for sure during this spring’s transplants: Roundup doesn’t harm earthworms. Every shovelful of earth from the defoliated patches was full of big, healthy crawlers. Maybe they come to the clear spots for the nightlife.

The Queen’s biology students studying robins on the property have complained of widespread egg predation, even to the point that two of their painted plaster eggs had turned up missing. This afternoon when checking for sprouts I found one of the dummy eggs in a hole on top of a walnut. Further examination of other planting sites revealed other eggshells on top of walnuts. It seems the crows like these ready-made egg cups created when I forced walnuts into the soft ground last fall.

Filling the Gaps Left by Squirrels

Once again I can thank the squirrels for a new project. So far I have replaced the two most western rows in the new field, and an area six rows by four at the northwestern corner. Today I concentrated on the effects of recent raids upon the southwestern corner. All in all, that would be (so far) 97 seedlings transplanted to repair damage from gray and red squirrels since last fall. That’s a lot of work.

Regular squirrel patrols have produced plenty of hawk-bait. Except for one case where I ran out of ammunition in a duel with a feisty red who seemed to know how to duck, the .22 has proven a permanent solution in the case of each individual squirrel. Last fall Rhonda Elliot told me that if I hung the carcasses from fence posts the hawks would take them and come back for more — and take over my patrolling duties, I hoped. So far no hawks have shown an interest.

On the other hand, Queen’s graduate student Susie Crowe showed a brief but intense interest when she came nose-to-nose with one of my trophies as she walked the fencerows locating robin nests.

The lack of success of the .22 calibre solution became evident when I checked my live traps today. The grays have adapted again. I never see them now, but the nuts are still disappearing at a steady rate. They wait for me to leave. Mom told me last week that my truck is no sooner over the hill than the front yard at the house is alive with grays.

So it was time for guile. I distinctly remember orienting the live traps in an east-west direction so that I could check them with a glance from the north. This morning I noticed that one trap had been turned, so I figured at last I had caught a gray squirrel in the new Hav-A-Hart. Alas, it was not to be. Apparently I had placed the baited trap on top of a couple of seed walnuts which the squirrel wanted, so he simply moved the trap out of the way, dug out the three nuts in the hill, ignored the dozen excellent nuts in the trap, and scuttled happily back into the woods. The rodent even left the empty shells on the ground at the scene of the crime.

Grays are too smart for traps. The only time I have used this Hav-A-Hart successfully on a gray was last year when I sewed a walnut onto a string and suspended it above the trip-plate in the trap. A young gray spent so much time standing looking at this mystery that I went and got my gun and shot him.

Anyway, I have now transplanted most of the extra seedlings from other hills in the plantation. The ground has been soft and they came out neatly in a shovel-full of earth, which I then placed in the new hole. Last summer’s seedlings are very easy to dig up and move. The 2nd-year stems have larger root systems and a deep root, but the tap seems to come up largely intact with the shovel, so I hope they will survive. Three-year-old stems are too large to transplant without major root damage.

I’ll monitor the transplants for this season and the next. That should provide some useful information about transplant survivability, with no thanks to the squirrels who made it all possible.

Elmer Sends in Reinforcements

The heavy snow at last melted from the edge of the newly-planted walnut field, so I examined the hills for surviving nuts in the rows next to the woodlot.  Many of the seeds were missing in the outer row, and the predation had moved in a full five rows at the northwestern corner of the field, next to a red squirrel hideout.  A total of 32 hills had been wiped out by squirrels.

I began armed patrols and shortly had reduced the predators by three reds, one chipmunk (no kidding, they’re relentless nut-thieves), and one very crafty gray.

That has slowed the bleeding.  Yesterday I started transplanting yearling seedlings from the display field, where they were growing in groups of up to five stems per hill after 2006’s remarkably successful seeding frenzy.

At first I moved plants to fill the gaps in the display field only, but when the gaps ran out I loaded the back of the golf cart up with a half-dozen shovels-full of sod (containing a seedling in each), and ran them down the hill to the raided areas in the new field where similar holes awaited them.  I wouldn’t think the trees were out of the ground for longer than two or three minutes, tops, and the ground is moist.

Three-year-old saplings don’t want to move, and even two-year-olds can’t be dug up without cutting off or tearing out the main root.  Last year’s seeds seem to come out well in a shovel-full, though.

While I haven’t named the individuals I moved to new homes, their size and the disturbed sod should make their continued study relatively easy.  From what I saw last year in the garden, I suspect the yearling seedlings will survive and the others will die by July.

More on this later.  Patrols continue.  I saw a nice harrier today, and hope it will help.

Oh, BTW:  the weekend highlight was the sight of three white swans flying low over the house.  Those are some birds!

The Heartnut Buzz Begins

Nut fanciers might wish to check out Ron Eade’s article in the food section (E1) of The Ottawa Citizen today. He interviews a chocolatier about heartnuts.

Now if Robin Lee would only decide to market a walnut cracker in the Lee Valley Tools Christmas Catalogue next year, the stage would be set for the growth of Heartnuts and native Black Walnuts as viable gourmet choices on the Canadian market.

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/food/story.html?id=60327175-13f8-4967-b8e5-f6a5e4501cef&p=1

Squirrels again II

Yesterday I raced before the gathering snow clouds to resolve the issue of the squirrel-depleted seed supply in the new field.  As you may recall I had listed four alternatives:

1.  ignore the losses and plant more nuts;

2.  fence the squirrels away from the seeds;

3.  shoot or poison the little demons;

4.  find a way to gross them out.

I had intended to report a glorious smear tactic in this space, one using a couple of tons of fresh, green goo.  Turned out that wasn’t all that easy to do.  First, every farmer I asked offered only well-aged, environmentally friendly compost — excellent fertilizer, but almost completely lacking in that essential “yuck” factor.  When I refused one offer, planning to hold out for the gooey stuff, a neighbour pointed out that my spreader couldn’t contain the smelly stuff, unless I wanted to haul it in oil barrels and spread it with a bucket.  That grossed me out and I abandoned the plan.

Then yesterday afternoon it warmed up after a heavy rain and the time for the assault had come.  In the tradition of Sir Arthur Currie, it came down to choice #1,  so I exhorted my basket of  nuts to further efforts in the name of The Croskery Woodlot and sent them out in ever greater numbers to face their wiley foes.  It was better than doing nothing, and I have lots of  nuts.  I’ll watch from the safety of the verandah and hope they survive.

Squirrels again!

The lead article in this edition of The Nuttery cites an European study http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061222093058.htm which claims that red squirrels have population explosions timed to take advantage of bountiful nut harvests. In other words they predict the boom year and have extra litters to exploit the resource. Scientists are still scratching their heads about how they do this, but there was no mistaking the huge increase in the number of red squirrels underfoot two summers ago. The population had settled down considerably by this fall’s stingy harvest.

Good riddance to them, and to chipmunks, too, if they would ever leave.

Over the last two years, on the other hand, my esteem for grey squirrels has increased steadily. While they may not be psychic like their red cousins, they show amazing adaptibility and a strong work ethic. I’ve already mentioned how they changed their harvesting tactics due to the demise of the old coyote and the presence of Zeke, the local red-tailed hawk. They stayed on the ground this fall until the day after Zeke flew south, and then they took to the trees with a vengeance.

Perhaps the current wolf became the target of a bored deer hunter, because now the greys have discovered my new walnut seeds. They started at the corner near the large trees and have worked their way into the field about forty feet. Another individual is picking the outer row off quite methodically, most likely using the posts and burned patches from Roundup to help him find the nuts. So it’s Elmer Fudd time again. My choices seem to be to:

1. ignore the losses and plant more nuts;

2. fence the squirrels away from the seeds;

3. shoot or poison the little demons;

4. find a way to gross them out.

Years ago I found the easiest way to get rid of fish entrails in the country was to find a convenient woodchuck hole and drop everything down the vertical chute. The chucks didn’t like this. They kept moving away until I ran out of holes within walking distance of my fish-cleaning bench.

When emptying ancient squirrel nests from the soffits of my mother’s house two summers ago I was struck by the cleanliness of the nesting material. Unlike mice, greys seem very fastidious in their personal habits. Maybe I can use this to my advantage.

If I can introduce a substance around the new plantings which the squirrels find repugnant, maybe they’ll leave the seeds alone.

Fresh cow manure would be my first choice as it is in good supply in my area, has benefits as a fertilizer, and is unlikely to attract racoons and coyotes in the manner of fish entrails. Mind you, neither of the above eat walnuts, and they have been known to munch on the occasional squirrel. Hmmm.

The outer two rows of the field seem to be the most vulnerable to predation. That would be seventy forks-full of green, gooey stuff. Will it work? Will it last? Of course it would be a lot quicker just to plant another fifty nuts to fill the gaps, but that didn’t work two years ago or last year, and the other patches still have few trees in the outer rows.

More on this later.