Most of us probably own a couple of vice grips. It is a cheap easy way to crack nuts. Although a bit slow, it does a great job.
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Most of us probably own a couple of vice grips. It is a cheap easy way to crack nuts. Although a bit slow, it does a great job.
Diameter at 54" above ground level is the same as the base, trunk does not taper at all, which calculates to an age of just over 163 years...I have a smaller black walnut out back that I grew from a seedling, going to measure that one when I go back out as I know it is 17 years old.
I do pretty well with a vise to crack them. You can control the break point and catch the fragments as they fall. I've tried to figure out which way to orient the nuts in the vise to get the best breaking pattern, but haven't settled on a particular way yet....seems pretty random how they break.
I don't mind the flavor of the nuts afer the husk has gone black, so I usually wait until then to harvest. I put on some rubber boots and gloves and squish the nuts out of the softened husks. I wait until they dry a bit before shelling them, so my hands don't get quite so stained.
Chuck
I was told black walnuts are not ok to eat?
If you were here in Missouri, you could probably sell those nuts to the Hammond company. They may be the only commercial source for black walnut meat. I remember seeing a hulling machine set up in one of the small towns along the road that runs east on the north side of the Missouri form Jefferson City. Folks were waiting with pickup truck loads of the nuts waiting to hull them. I only have one small black walnut tree on my place and it didn't make any nuts this year. When it does produce, the bucket or so it makes is all I care to crack anyway.
Chuck
Yeah!
I went out to my creek bed and measured a white oak that had come down.
By the formula it is 180 years old.
A branch has rings on it that I counted at about 100. Somehow I don't see this working out, the formula, that is.
If I can get the saw through the base this weekend, I'll go back and count the rings.