North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Charles Paradise <machelp@attglobal.net>]

Mark,
For tasting purposes - to taste your first crop - you can take a piece of 
aluminum window screen, bend it to fit around a cluster of nuts, then use an 
ordinary office stapler to staple it around it.

It won't save the full crop, but it'll enable you to taste the walnut, so you 
know what the walnut tastes like when fully ripened.

I have a shagbark hickory planted 1984 been bearing for 3 or more years still 
haven't tasted because never did what i just told you to do.  But I'm going 
outside right now with the stapler and I'm going to do it.
Charlie Paradise
a Massachusetts filled with squirrels

markl wrote:

> I have a seedling walnut that is producing a crop of nuts for the first 
> time.  It has taken about 20 years to reach this point.  So now I want to 
> harvest the nuts before the squirrels get them all.  They are green on the 
> outside, and the shells are starting to get woody.  Inside, the nutmeat is 
> almost to its full size.  Should I pick them green and dry them in a safe 
> place, or should I let them hang on the tree until they start to fall off?  
> Also, how do I process them after picking so that I have a pile of nuts 
> with clean shells, and not a pile of slimy black balls that they will turn 
> into when the green outer coat starts to rot?
> -Mark Lee, Seattle z8