Growing walnuts at home. Walnut - tree of life

17.06.2019

Tell me, is it possible to grow a nut from a nut from the market? Tried - doesn't work.

Your regular reader I.A. Mokeev, Nizhny Novgorod region

Candidate of Agricultural Sciences Evgeny Anatolyevich Vasin answers the question.

You can grow a walnut in this way if the purchased nut is not fried and fresh, that is, from this year's harvest. There are several ways to germinate nuts. Simplest - autumn sowing in the land of freshly picked (bought in the fall) nuts of a new crop. Last year's nuts will have (if any) very low germination. And if they were stored for several years, then your efforts to germinate are equal to zero - it has been verified by bitter personal experience.

For autumn planting, it is necessary to choose a place on a site where the soil is not acidic, since the nut grows better on soils from slightly acidic to slightly alkaline. Dig a place on a shovel bayonet, make a trench 8-10 cm deep and put your nuts (it is better to plant several pieces for a greater guarantee) on the edge, cover them with soil. Water at autumn planting not necessary, as moisture will accumulate naturally during the winter. In places where winters have little snow, walnut beds should be mulched with fallen leaves, dry grass, etc. with a layer of 10-20 cm. In spring, this mulch will help to retain moisture under it. If the spring is dry and early, watering the walnut beds is necessary. As the soil warms up, the nuts will begin to germinate, but not evenly, but within 5-10 days and up to 1 month. Sometimes the nuts germinate after a year, so don't rush to cull the nuts that haven't germinated until next spring.

In addition to retaining moisture in the spring, mulch can protect young seedlings from sunburn. To do this, you need to select light mulching materials (sawdust, grass). If the mulching layer has been large since autumn, then it must be reduced to 5 cm, but it should not be completely removed for the above reasons.

If you purchased nuts late in the fall and did not have time to plant them in the ground before winter, then there are other ways of pre-sowing preparation. This is stratification and soaking before spring planting. Each of them has its own subtleties and nuances. The main thing is that the nuts must go through a period of cold dormancy from 30 to 90 (120) days. It depends on the genetic characteristics of the seed material (that is, nuts) and the timing when you got the nuts.

Nuts with a thick shell (1.5 mm or more) must be laid on cold stratification, and with a shell thickness of up to 1.5 mm and especially less than 1.0 mm, it is better to soak and germinate in warmth.

Stratification. Before laying for stratification, nuts must be soaked in water at room temperature for 2-3 days with a daily change of water. The substrate for the stratification of nuts can be wet, steamed chilled sawdust or wet calcined sand, preferably river sand. Wooden shallow boxes or leaky pans are suitable as a container. First, pour a layer of wet sawdust or sand into the container, put the nuts on edge and cover them with a substrate (sawdust or sand) on top. Then put the container with nuts in a room with a temperature of +3 .. + 7C. Once a month, check the nuts and, if necessary, moisten the substrate. Attention! The substrate should not be damp, but only wet, especially closer to spring. Otherwise, the nut will not germinate, but become moldy. The moisture content of sawdust is determined as follows: when squeezing them in a fist, water should ooze, and not flow. Wet sand crumbles a little. Closer to spring, nuts should be checked 1-2 times a week with mixing of the substrate. With early germination of roots, it is necessary to reduce the storage temperature to +1..+2C, and before planting, gradually increase the temperature over several days.

Plant nuts in the ground after spring frosts have passed. From above, the soil is mulched with sawdust to save seedlings from sunburn. You can build a semblance of a greenhouse, but this is not necessary.

Another way is spring soaking. Before that, the nuts must undergo “dry” cold storage at a temperature below +10C, it is better if it is within +1..+5C, for at least 30 days. Soaking the nuts begins about a month before they are supposed to be planted in the ground. It is convenient to do this in a wide shallow dish. The water should cover the nut halfway up or slightly deeper. Some nuts float and some sink. It is undesirable for them to stay at the bottom for a long time - they can suffocate. If the nuts float too high, they can be discarded. They may be empty or dry. In the latter case, they need more time to gain moisture. At room temperature, the nuts are soaked for 2-5 (7) days until the wings move apart. With an increase in temperature to +30..+35C, the soaking process is reduced. I had a case when a nut hatched in one day of soaking at a water temperature of +35 .. + 40C, that is, it not only swelled, having absorbed a sufficient amount of moisture, but its spine hatched. It was a very thin-skinned nut with a shell thickness of 0.6 mm. After the shells of the nuts have parted, they are ready for germination.

Such nuts are placed in a sprouting container (see above). The temperature in the room where germination takes place should be +25..+28C. The moisture content of sawdust has already been discussed. Nuts germinate within 5-10 days, sometimes a little earlier. When the roots reach a length of 0.5-1.0 cm, the nuts are transferred to a cold store with a temperature of +3..+5C and kept there until planting in the ground. When planting nuts in the spring after stratification with or without roots, they are deepened by 5-7 cm. Before planting, trenches or pits are watered and the nuts are laid on moist soil. From above they are sprinkled with soil and mulched with sawdust.

The main points of sprouting nuts of the Juglans genus are listed above. Of course, there are other ways of pre-sowing preparation of walnut seeds, but these are already subtleties that are important for specialists.

When shoots appear, the main care comes down to weeding, loosening the soil, and watering. AT middle lane the best fertilizer is ash. From the second half of summer, it is given for better maturation of wood and preparation for winter. For the winter, an annual plant is better to mulch.

In a previous article about walnuts, it was said that these are mighty sprawling trees with a powerful crown. This statement is partly true, since walnut trees, like people, there are also giants under 20 m, and there are also dwarfs two meters tall. It all depends on the genotype. But this is a separate conversation.

Please note that in photo 2 - not a seedling, but a grafted seedling walnut which can be found on sale.

E.A. Vasin, Ph.D. agricultural sciences, Tula

Number of impressions: 22461

Instruction

For sowing, use fresh nuts from this year's harvest. The longer they are stored, the lower their germination will be. If you have the opportunity to collect the seeds yourself, choose ripe nuts that fall easily from the pericarp box and expose them to the sun for a day or two. You can dry the seeds in the shade.

If you're harvesting nuts in the fall, choose an area of slightly acidic or slightly alkaline soil. Acidic soil should be limed prior to sowing. Level ground water on the site should be constant, but not high. Dig up the earth and make a groove in it eight centimeters deep.

Put the nuts in the groove on the edge at a distance of about forty centimeters from one another. The spacing between rows should be less than a meter. Sprinkle the nuts with earth. In areas with little snowy winters, crops should be covered with grass or sawdust with a layer of ten to twenty centimeters.

In the spring, when the nuts begin to sprout, remove the pieces of sawdust, leaving a five-centimeter layer. Walnut seeds germinate unevenly, seedlings may appear even after a year.

Before spring planting, the nuts are kept for a period of one to three months in wet sand or sawdust. Seeds with a shell, the thickness of which is less than a millimeter, are best soaked in water, nuts with a thick skin are stratified according to all the rules.

Before putting nuts in sawdust or sand, soak them for two or three days in room temperature water, which will have to be changed every day. Place the soaked seeds in a container with wet sand or sawdust on edge, sprinkle with a substrate and put it in a room with a temperature of three to seven degrees. Once a month, the containers should be checked and, if necessary, the substrate should be moistened.

Nuts with a thin shell are stored at a temperature of one to five degrees in a dry place, and soaked in water at room temperature a month before planting. When the shells open, the seeds are laid on edge in a container with wet sawdust and germinated at a temperature of about twenty-five degrees.

seed germination

How to choose and how to germinate a walnut:

The collection of nuts is carried out as they fall from the tree, you can knock them down.
For sowing, the gardener selects large fruits with a thin shell and excellent taste. They take whole nuts, on which there are no defects and cracks. Make sure that there are no spots or dots on the shell.
You should not use store-bought fruits, as they may be old and unsuitable for growing.
The pericarp is removed for faster germination. Peel the fruit carefully, without touching the inner peel.
Rubber gloves are used for convenience.
The peeled fruits are placed in a container with water. Those that have gone to the bottom are suitable for landing.
After cleaning, the fruits are dried in the sun and placed in the shade. Do not use heating equipment to dry seeds.

Landing

If you do not know how to plant a walnut from a seed, follow the advice of experts. Planting seeds in open ground produced in autumn or spring.

Planting a nut in the fall is carried out on a regular territory, because during transplantation there is a risk of damaging the roots and destroying the plant. The diameter of the hole is about 1 m. The seeds need to be deepened by 20 cm and sprinkled with soil mixed with humus.

To grow a walnut tree that bears excellent fruit, planting rules will help:

Stratification should be carried out 3 months before disembarkation. Prepare wet sand and place nuts in it at a temperature not exceeding 7 ° C. After a week and a half, you can see a growing seedling.
Select the strongest seed from germinated.
It is important to lay the seeds strictly seam up. Approximately three fruits fit in the hole, which should be placed at a distance of 25 cm from each other. main feature laying out seeds is the observance of geometric shapes: three nuts are laid out in a triangle, and four in a square.
Fill the hole and tamp the resulting mound.

planting container

How to plant a walnut in a container:

For planting, a deep pot with drainage is suitable. The first container should have a diameter and depth of 30 cm. This will allow the root system of the tree to fit freely.
Each time you transplant, you need to select a new pot, the diameter of which will be 8 cm larger than the previous one.
The container should be placed in a room that is well lit by the sun. There should be no drafts or wind.
When flowers form, make the plant shelter from adverse external influences.
You can install the pot in greenhouse conditions. The tree does not like too dense soil, the soil should be slightly alkaline, very nutritious and loose.

growing at home

You can plant and grow a tree at home, but this process is laborious.

How to grow a nut from a fruit: grow a fruit in large pots, as this will protect the culture from severe frosts.

Large containers will provide the plant with the necessary useful components that it extracts from the soil. A nut grown in this way is of medium size. You should not expect a rich harvest from him. small size and the fruit of the tree. The taste of nuts directly depends on the care of the plant.

Care

When you have learned how to grow a walnut from seed, you need to take care of it. Worst enemy walnut - waterlogged or too dry soil. When there is too much moisture, the roots begin to rot and gradually die off.

Insufficient moisture threatens to stop the development of ovaries. On hot days, the amount of water should be increased. It may be necessary to wrap the pot with a damp cloth to cool the roots.

In order to protect the plant from freezing, you need to bring it into the room or cover it with burlap. By a similar method, the culture is preserved from birds. If you started growing walnuts at home, then you should mulch the soil with peat in the spring, you can use manure, moss. A walnut rarely gets sick, but if spots appear on its foliage, then you need to treat it with a special liquid.

Fertilizers are left during the growing season, when the crop needs additional feeding.

Walnut during the growing season needs additional feeding

Transplantation is carried out in the fall. To do this, the tree is taken out of the pot and one tenth of the root system is cut off. The elevated area also needs pruning. A transplant is needed in order for the nut to reach its final size. A tree that has taken root in a tub can be given any shape.

Do not forget the first years of the plant's life to carry out crown molding along with the removal of part of the flowers. This will prevent abundant fruiting. In summer, thin, weak shoots should be removed.

A tree planted correctly will grow healthy and bear fruit. Now you know how to plant a walnut from a fruit.

How to grow a walnut from a nut? I have never asked such a question, since my experience suggests that this is not the most The best way get a seedling of the variety that you want to have on your site. I have three walnut trees. Two varietal, and the third just grew out of a nut. And those nuts that I collect from the last one are not at all like the one that was planted. But let's get it right. To put everything on the shelves, let's start from afar.

Walnut seedling - how to grow

For the successful cultivation of walnuts in order to obtain fruits, it is necessary to have a deeper knowledge of the economic and biological characteristics of this crop, the features of the cultivation of planting material.

How to grow a walnut, breeding methods

Walnut is propagated by seeds and vegetatively (grafting).

Is it possible to propagate a walnut with nuts? At seed propagation there is a splitting of economically useful traits of the mother plant in the offspring, often for the worse, so it cannot serve as the basis for creating varietal plantations. It is used mainly for growing rootstock seedlings, as well as hybrid material for breeding. This method of reproduction is especially promising for the northern regions of our country, where walnut seedlings are gradually adapting to new ecological conditions of existence. Some of them can give viable offspring.

To increase winter hardiness, germinated seeds are recommended to be exposed to low temperatures (method I.V. Borzanovskaya). According to this method, germinated seeds (root length not more than 0.5 cm) are kept in a refrigerator for 12 hours at a temperature of minus 3 degrees, and for the next 12 hours in a warm room at a temperature of 18-20 degrees. The seed hardening period is 3-5 days. With such an effect of variable temperatures on germinated seeds, walnut seedlings were distinguished by better growth, increased winter hardiness, early maturity, and yield compared to control plants (without seed hardening).

The vegetative method of reproduction ensures the safety, transfer of varietal characteristics, properties of the mother plant to offspring.

grafted planting material walnut is in great demand, both from the production side, as well as from amateur gardeners. It is not always possible to buy varietal planting material. Therefore, we offer the most enterprising gardeners to master the method of vegetative propagation of walnuts based on summer budding, which will allow them to grow walnut seedlings of the required number of desired varieties on their plot without any special costs - both to satisfy their needs and for sale.

For reproduction, it is necessary to use zoned promising varieties that are distinguished by economically valuable properties. Most of them are fast-growing, quite winter-hardy, relatively resistant to diseases, productive, with fairly good commercial qualities of fruits.

Now, two methods of vegetative propagation have received the greatest development and practical application: summer budding and winter grafting (the latter method is more energy-intensive). With timely, high-quality carrying out of all types of work, they give approximately the same yield of standard seedlings (65-70% of the number of grafted plants).

To grow rootstocks, nuts are sown in a permanent place in the fall or in early spring(in March) subject to their stratification. Sowing method - single-row in furrows with a distance between rows of 70-8 cm, between seeds - 10-15 cm. Seed placement depth - 6-8 cm. Plant care consists in mulching, loosening the soil, destroying weeds, and in case of drought - watering.

Double walnut budding knife

The most common method of budding is a rectangular shield with an eye (half ring). To do this, you need a special double knife with parallel blades located at a distance of 3-3.5 cm. Best timing budding - during the sap flow of the stock (June - the first half of July) with a sleeping eye.

The success of budding largely depends on the quality of the cuttings. Harvest them from healthy purebred high-yielding young trees. The cuttings should be sufficiently mature, rounded, straight, at least 30 cm long, with large well-developed vegetative axillary buds.

The technique of budding with a rectangular shield is simple. On the stock, using a double knife at a height of 8-10 cm from the soil surface, two transverse cuts are made in the bark without touching the wood, then two longitudinal cuts are made, as if connecting them with the transverse ones, and a strip of bark is separated.

After that, with the same knife, in the same sequence, surgical operations are performed on the graft handle so that the eye is in the middle of the shield. Instead of a removed strip of bark, a rectangular scion shield is inserted on the rootstock.

Immediately after laying the scion shield, the place of budding is tightly tied plastic wrap, and the peephole and petiole are left open. After 20-25 days after budding, the strapping material is removed; by this time, the shield with the eye, as a rule, grows well with the stock. spring next year, after swelling of the kidneys, the stock is cut at an angle of 65-70 degrees above the shield without leaving a thorn. The shoots appearing on the rootstock are removed during the growing season. On a good agricultural background, the occulants grow rapidly, by the time they are dug up they reach a height of more than 2 meters.

This simple technique will allow you to first grow a walnut from a nut as a rootstock, and then graft onto it a cutting obtained from a tree with the properties you need.

Walnut tree - biological characteristics, description

The walnut is a powerful tree up to 8-15 m high with a large spreading crown, a trunk diameter of 0.5-1.5 m. When growing in free space, these figures may be higher. The growth and development of walnut trees is determined by their place of growth, the properties of the soil, subsoil, the biological characteristics of the variety, rootstock, and the state of agricultural technology.

Now varieties with restrained growth (tree height 6-8 m) have been created, which develop a small crown. They may well be cultivated in small suburban, personal plots.

If the plantings are thickened, then the walnut forms a rare, highly raised, and if sparse - a dense, sprawling spherical crown, consisting of a large number skeletal, semi-skeletal branches of various orders. His young shoots are dark green.

Most of the zoned, promising varieties of walnut during vegetative propagation begin to bear fruit 5-6 years after planting in the garden, and trees of seed origin - from 8-12 years of age. Early-fruiting varieties of the Ideal type are able to begin fruiting for 2-3 years, and some of its varieties can bear fruit twice during the growing season. With age, the expansion of the crown, fruiting increases. Full fruiting occurs in the 10-12th year. Its value depends on the variety, growing conditions, and also on moisture availability. With the use of higher agricultural technology, the walnut yield can be easily increased. It bears fruit to a ripe old age.

In the south of Russia, in the old Circassian gardens, walnut trees of seed origin grow, which at the age of 80-100 years and more have a fairly high productivity - 80-120 kg per tree. Low labor costs, funds for cultivation, their value make this crop highly profitable.

Walnut belongs to monoecious dioecious wind-pollinated plants. Men's and female flowers are formed on the same plant, but separately. Male (staminate) flowers have the form of inflorescences in the form of catkins, which are formed from lateral buds on the growth of the previous year, and female (pistillate) flowers are formed in the apical and lateral buds (in the leaf axils) of the shoots of the current year. They are green in color. Sticky two-lobed stigmas are well developed.

male flowers walnut

In the south of Russia, the walnut vegetation begins in the first or second half of April, the most active growth of shoots in length occurs in the first or second decade of May, and it fades by the end of June. The walnut blooms in late April-early May, flowering ends in the second or third decade of May. According to the timing of flowering, early-mid- and late-flowering varieties are distinguished. It is characterized by the phenomenon of dichogamy, that is, the non-simultaneous ripening of male and female flowers on the same plant, which prevents self-pollination, but promotes cross-pollination. Plants in which the anthers open before the stigma matures are called protandric, but if the stigma matures before, they are called protogynous. Sometimes there are homogamous trees, in which the timing of flowering of staminate and pistillate flowers coincides. In the latter case, they begin the fruiting period faster, their pistillate and staminate flowers bloom longer, which ensures partial self-pollination, respectively, an increase in yield.

The phenomenon of dichogamy must be taken into account when selecting walnut varieties for joint planting on plantations, combining them in such a way that the flowering of female flowers of some coincides in time with the flowering of male inflorescences of others.

The fruit is a false drupe (nut), which varies greatly in shape and size. The fruit ripening period is extended - ripening begins in late August-early September, continues almost until the end of the month. Three groups of trees are distinguished according to the ripening time: the first is early-ripening, the second is ripening, the third is late-ripening.

The vegetation of the walnut in the North Caucasus very often stops with the onset of frosts, which are dated for the end of October - the beginning of November. The duration of the growing season is 190-240 days.

The root system is powerful, rod type, penetrates to a depth of more than 8-10 m. It has well-developed lateral branches, which go far beyond the crown projection. The main mass of these roots is located in the upper half-meter soil layer. The walnut is sensitive to the close occurrence of groundwater (less than 1.5 m), the underlying dense clay horizon or rock (less than 0.6-0.8 m), in these cases, the tap root dies off, and a superficial root system develops. In addition, the lack of drainage in a wet year creates the danger of overmoistening of the root-inhabited horizon, which leads to strong inhibition of the root system, and with prolonged flooding, to its complete death.

An important biological feature of walnut varieties is the type of fruiting. Most have an apical type of fruiting. The laying of generative organs in them occurs only in the apical bud of annual growth. However, there are varieties in which, along with the apical bud, part of the lateral ones is also fruitful (apical-lateral type of fruiting). It has been established that varieties with the latter type of fruiting are 1.5 times more productive than those with the apical type of fruiting, which should also be taken into account when planting plantations, giving preference to the former.

Walnut is a heat-loving, but rather frost- and winter-hardy nut-bearing breed. It grows successfully, bears fruit where the average annual air temperature is plus 8-10 degrees, the duration of the growing season is 150 days, and the minimum air temperature rarely drops below minus 22-25 degrees. However, the walnut can withstand, without significant damage, lower temperatures during winter, when the trees are in a state of deep dormancy. For example, in Moldova there were cases when he suffered a drop in temperature to minus 25-27 degrees, in Bulgaria - to minus 30 degrees, and in Ukraine - to minus 40 degrees.

Observations of the winter hardiness of walnut in the North Caucasus showed that short frosts down to minus 27-28 degrees do not cause serious damage to the trees of local variety forms - they normally bear fruit. Much more dangerous for him are sharp drops in air temperature after a long thaw, as well as at the end of winter. In such years, fruiting is absent, but the damaged crown is being restored, which lasts at least two years, after which the tree is able to bear fruit normally again. The degree of damage depends on the characteristics of the variety, the rootstock, the age of the plants, the density of standing, the place of growth, the state of agricultural technology. On a good agricultural background, trees suffer less from severe frosts. Their winter hardiness increases with sufficient soil moisture, dry, cold autumn, and an earlier end of the growing season.

The walnut is very sensitive to cooling in the flowering phase (mass shedding of pistillate flowers occurs already when the air temperature drops to 0-1 degrees Celsius. To avoid this, it is necessary to grow late-flowering varieties that avoid the return of cold weather during the flowering period, or cultivate it where no late spring frosts.

Walnut does not tolerate heat, prolonged soil atmospheric drought, which inhibits the growth of trees, reduces the size and quality of the crop. There are cases when a temperature increase of more than 37 degrees caused premature shedding of fruits from the lower part of the crown. The negative effect of drought is exacerbated when it is grown on poor, dry soils. To increase the resistance of the walnut tree to drought, it should be planted on rich deep soils where 550-600 mm of precipitation falls during the growing season.

It should be noted that most regions of the North Caucasus have a favorable combination of climatic factors that provide normal growth, the annual fruiting of walnut trees.

Walnut has a high shoot-forming ability, therefore it tolerates crown rejuvenation well. It quickly restores it with severe freezing of branches in harsh winters, when the air temperature drops to a critical mark for its overwintering, below minus 28-30 degrees. At the same time, the restoration of the crown is due to the abundant growth that forms on the lower parts of the old-growth branches that are not damaged by frost, and if the entire crown is frozen, then due to the growth that forms at the base of the tree from the root collar.

Walnut is a light-loving crop, therefore it grows well, regularly bears fruit when it is sparsely placed on a plantation, where there are conditions for free growth, the development of a powerful spreading crown. With dense plantings, where access to sunlight is limited due to lateral shading, the trees are strongly elongated in height, forming a crop only in the upper part of the crown.