Planting and Managing Walnut Trees

[Landonskalet18]

I am going to take a few corners of my farm that cannot be put into production and plant some walnut trees. My questions are......
Whats the best way to plant? From seed? Transplanting maybe?
What the best way to prune? I want to give these trees the best chance to become veneer quality.
Should they be tubed?

 

[Daver]

From what I have seen, the best quality lumber trees tend to come from bottom ground, as in down slope. There a tree has to grow straight and tall to "reach" for sunlight v. the other neighbor trees. Take my advice FWIW, I am not a professional forester, but I think "field" trees are going to be much harder to get to veneer quality.

Definitely get other opinions than mine, but I have heard many people talk about the walnut in grandpa's back yard as a high dollar, veneer log...only I have never seen that actually happen. It ranges anywhere from loggers/millers not wanting to mess with it to very average value, nowhere near the bottom land ones.

 

[newfarmer]

Yes- yard trees are basically junk. One piece of metal can ruin a tree too.
What I’ve seen done, planting from seed (most readily available) and then get a fast growing “junk” tree to help your rows. I’ve know people to use cedars or arborvitae, but as terrible as it sounds, junk box elders work too. They get dirty enough the walnuts have to shoot straight up and out. If you get them thick enough they help shade the lower limbs off the walnuts and basically self prune. I’ve got about 50 walnuts in a mix of box elders and the walnuts are going up- box elders are just thickening low. Also remember- you won’t see a Veneer walnut for pry 50+ years unless you have the best soil on the planet.
I sold one that made Veneer quality and they figured it was at least 80 years old from what they could tell me.

 

[hans1]

Walnuts like a well drained soil,to start from an open field i would go with a direct nut seeding.I would include some fast growing silver maple or as mentioned box elder. i would try to collect the walnuts to plant from trees that have the genetics you are looking for.

 

[Sligh1]

Certain states offer “genetically superior” (chosen for certain traits) walnuts. They can be bought. Still same walnuts but taken from trees that are extremely rare as the best genetics have been taken out over the last 100-150 years .. at least according to them. Which does make sense. How they grow & their location & soil type are clearly the most important things of course. Give em competition & keep em pruned/babied. Lots of videos on that. I was lucky on my farm- full of walnuts ….. really good ones…. so all I have to do is keep a variety of age ranges & make sure the regeneration keeps going. I probably visit every one of my walnut trees over a lot of acres, 1 time every 3-4 years I’d guess…. Vines, competition, damage, etc.