Black Walnut from Nut Seed to Timber Tree with Leo C. Bird 1993 

Unfortunately, Leo C Bird was killed in a tragic tree accident. His family are asking that you NOT send walnuts to his funeral.

Good question that I can’t answer. Hopefully someone can. I would assume with the extra steps there is a higher percentage of trees that come to life.

If you have no wintertime nut predation from squirrels you can plant in the fall. However, there are very few fields where this is the case. Squirrels are remarkably adept at figuring out visual clues such as tire marks, cultivator marks, etc. and they will find and decimate fall plantings of nuts. They'll do that in the spring too but they have less time to do so, as they don't want the nut after the seedling is up and growing. I'm a black walnut farmer and grow from seeds when I can. Another thing some do is plant hoards of nuts in rows knowing that squirrels will get 90+% of them but that a few nuts will make it. But when you do that you lose the cross row alignment of the future trees and are unable to mow cross-rows in the future. That is bad news for long term vegetation management. You can plant nuts under wire mesh that will gradually rust away, or in rusty cans. These methods work but add tremendously to the labor during nut planting. Squirrel predation of nuts is a constant headache and is one of the biggest reasons to plant seedlings instead of seeds. Hope this helps.

@@marknussbaum8394 definitely squirrels are an issue if you live in an area with a lot of them. I live in crop country. Not a lot of squirrels around my farm. Too much open space to traverse to get to my place for them. Lots of red tail hawks and eagles around here. I do have a friend who owns 640 acres of timber. He can’t grow anything without squirrels raising it. They chew the wires off the motor on his trucks and tractors. You name it they chew it up. I finally gave him 3 rat terrier dogs and they hate squirrels so he doesn’t have as much of a problem with them anymore. Lol I put about 300 black walnuts from the trees on my place in a livestock tank covered in good black dirt mixed with sand and peer moss about 4 inches. Covered with hardware cloth. Looking forward to seeing if they sprout come spring. I made black walnut stain out of the husks.

Squirrels have a low opinion of the grower's need for even spacing and rows. They also enjoy a rate of planting success which I envy.

@@marknussbaum8394 true they will watch you and investigate what you were doing later and they can smell out the nuts

Leo was very passionate about his trees.

I don't know if any of the kids or grandkids are still doing it or not. I haven't had contact with anyone since Leo about the tree farm.

You’re welcome. Thanks for watching.