My walnut thread

[nativewolf]

Nice old tree, found 20 others close to it but this was the king of this old field.

Another beautiful specimen. So for the scrawny trees nearby and perhaps the one right next to this tree- are those being taken out because of their crooks and defects or left in the hopes of encouraging younger ones to grow straight?

That's a hackberry to the side of it.  We'll leave it as in this forest we have a lot of hackberry/walnut and since the hackberry are not dominate and not too competitive it seems to do little harm to leave it.   Our hope is that we'll see more young walnut regeneration once the dominant tree is removed and we get sunlight.  Worried about grape vines, wild rose and spice bush crowding out regeneration.  I hope to do some mechanical treatment here and gently mulch the brush and hopefully bury some of the walnut on the ground.  They have lots of fruit, fruit is good, I've eaten several so I hope they sprout like crazy once they get some light and pushed into the ground a bit. 

We are doing a veneer cut, most trees over 21" will be cut and any with problems.  We'll replant 10 for everyone we cut, something I encourage everyone to do, the seedlings are cheap.  Plus we'll hopefully have that regeneration.  I plan to be cutting these stands again in 10 years.

[nativewolf]

Are you seeing any issues with Thousand Canker Disease?  We have a quarantine in place in the Greater Richmond area and surrounding counties.  I know there is a quarantine area around Prince William County, Falls Church, Fairfax, & Manassas.  One more thing to wipe out our resources.  By the way.....nice walnut.  I have a couple of small ones in my pond that sunk.  I need to fish them out.

Wudman

I haven't seen any TCD yet.  Sure I will.  Just going to monitor for now.  Yeah this one tract makes me feel like I am in S Indiana or N Missouri  or something.  Crazy nice.  Going to take 50% of the stems and see if the younger stems release.  According to my contacts in MO they should release and grow quickly.  We'll see.  Maybe come back and do it again in 10 years.  Surprised no one on here is a walnut logger from there.

I'm not from MO, but S/W Ohio where we cut preety good walnut at times--some really big old trees also that have been passed over yrs. ago. The farmland is rich here, a different type of soil than MO.  I've cut walnut for nearly 40 yrs. now, still cutting. We have fairly good competition for our logs--maybe your area isn't know for walnut primarily although those youv'e look great! Hows the peck, the sap, any pins on that big one--is that a "wing" there to your right or just a small seam? Hope it cuts good--don't give up on buyers, keep looking further away from your main area. By the way, are you in the greater Warrenton area? Our youngest son lives in Arlington, we are often up there visiting him. Maybe I could contact you  up there sometime?

Warrenton is our county seat, I am about 20 mins n west of there.  Arlington is nice, very popular with younger folks due to the trains, food, ..and other young people.

  We get ok pricing, for logs this nice I hope to do better, you guys in S Ohio, S Indiana, MO, S IL man you guys have some pretty walnut stands.  Great stands along the floodplains down there. 

If you could send me a PM with any big buyers I think we'll have an easy 150mbf for sale within the next 8 weeks.  Quite a lot of that is going to be veneer and the difference between a $12/bdft and the $7/bdft we can get locally is huge, basically months of salary. 

If you don't mind the question, what's the price range you guys see ?  Log exporters are our best bet here, $3/bdft for common saw logs, 5 for prime and up to 7 for veneer.  They take anything and everything down to 4' chunks and down to 8" in diameter though there is no scale at such small diameters. 

[PA_Walnut]

"Replant 10 for ever 1" is a fabulous idea. I need to do that on my own land!
Where's a good place to buy seedlings?

[nativewolf]

Thanks for the compliment.  Easy to buy them, the state forest services raise them, just contact them and let them know you'd like xxxx many for next year.  They'll start planting soon and if anything like VA they are sold out pretty quick, VA is sold out, MD too.  You can also a   from commercial nurseries but they maybe a bit more.  In quantity they are less than a buck each.  Also you can sprout your own, wet compost manure and 1000 walnut seeds will do the trick.

[PA_Walnut]

Cool. I'm always trying to be a good steward of my land. This seems like a nice way to give back. I don't have a lot of walnut, but had to recently harvest some HUGE ones due to excavating. Neighbor has a huge one hanging over his house that he's giving me if I take it down. Have to get my climber to get up there and do it right.

My woods has been poorly managed for the past 3-4 decades (or more). Tons of wild roses, monkey vines, thicket and crap. Resulting in poor and unhealthy trees. (also due to being on a mountain). Looking at getting someone from the Forestry extension to come in and help me get it righted.

[cbay]

A lot of people don't know but the MDC (Missouri Department of Conservation) nursery is available for out of state ordering as well.   
The 2018 seedling order form can be found here:  https://mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/downloads/SeedlingOrderForm.pdf
100+ on hardwoods .32 each.

[nativewolf]

Thanks Cbay, many states do the same.  If I could find another 2k seedlings for this year I'd be happy but I don't want to spend 4-5 bucks each. 

The other thing though is I like to use local seed sources unless I'm getting improved stock.  It might be fun to trial so of the MO or Indiana seedling vs our local and see if there is a difference. 

[curdog]

I'll have to look,  but I read somewhere about moving seedlings from different areas and it's recommended to only move seed sources so many degrees of latitude and longitude,  but I can't remember how many degrees it is.. I'll try to find it..
But there was some phragmitese that was planted in eastern nc that was grown from seeds from New Jersey and they go dormant many weeks earlier in the fall and green up later in the spring. They're doing fine but it's noticeable when there's hundreds or thousands of acres of brown vegetation and the same species surrounding it is still green.
And we have a landowner that planted northern red and white oaks from a mountain seed source in the piedmont and the trees are always 2-3 weeks behind in the spring compared to the "native" trees. They're doing fine,  but I notice it every year....

[PA_Walnut]

A brief search netted a local source of ALL kinds of seedlings, including walnuts. Since I'm only going for like 25 or so, $3 or 4 ok each.

I need to get a forester in to help me figure out a control policy for all the brush and scrub down low.

[nativewolf]

I'll have to look,  but I read somewhere about moving seedlings from different areas and it's recommended to only move seed sources so many degrees of latitude and longitude,  but I can't remember how many degrees it is.. I'll try to find it..
But there was some phragmitese that was planted in eastern nc that was grown from seeds from New Jersey and they go dormant many weeks earlier in the fall and green up later in the spring. They're doing fine but it's noticeable when there's hundreds or thousands of acres of brown vegetation and the same species surrounding it is still green.
And we have a landowner that planted northern red and white oaks from a mountain seed source in the piedmont and the trees are always 2-3 weeks behind in the spring compared to the "native" trees. They're doing fine,  but I notice it every year....

Yep best to use localized seed unless you have a special reason not to.  But for the what the heck, I might try some of the Indiana/MO walnut saplings.   I can say that the walnut on our last job had huge growth rings, you could be looking at pine.  Still paid $.

[PA_Walnut]

No deal on MO walnut saplings. All sold out. I got some white oak from them though.
Gonna give it a shot!  8)

[curdog]

Nativewolf,
What spacing are you planting walnut on? I usually plant oaks on some of our upland sites,  but I work with some landowners that have some sites that would grow good walnut. Some of our river and creek bottoms would be well suited for this,  and could give some diversity in management. I've planted oaks anywhere from a 10x10 to a 14x14. I let our poplar sites reseed naturally,  but I've never done much for walnut management.

[nativewolf]

I like to plant the walnut wide, 10 10 is good.  I let the natural YP, sycamore regen keep them honest and growing straight.  Nice to get 20' clear  or so on a 15 year old walnut.  Then you can start girdling the other trees and the walnut will respond nicely and add diameter.  You just want to try to get a couple of nice clear saw logs with minimal issues.  Today we sent a load of crap to the buyer, 2/3 of trailer, 1900bdft due to small size.  Only 4 trees so lots of tops and crap.  Still got avg of $2/bdft but man it was terrible.  That's not what a well tended walnut grove yields.

Anyway, plant wide, but don't let them branch out so you'll need some way to keep growing straight up for a few years.

[Autocar]

Sad thing about these high walnut prices is in my area there won't be a tree left for the future. I always try to think about the future but when you see eight inch walnut in sawmill yards and landing's I just shake my head . Every now and then I will talk to the buyers but like they say If I don't buy them so and so will and I am in the sawmill business. I would like to see the prices come back to normal then a lot of these company's would disappear with to much work for the reward. Don't get me wrong I like the high prices also but if you truly had saw dust in your blood you would be thinking about the next young fellow that gives logging  a try and falls head over heals for the job !

[nativewolf]

Well I guess I like the trees more than the sawdust, I really enjoy a wonderful forest.  That's why I plant.  Every contract of mine has regeneration discussions. 

That said, lots of landowners just don't care.  For them, its just..oh that's nice.  The grandkids may care but the current owners often just want $. 

I frankly love the high dollars and we have a typical cut limit of 22".  Now I take lots of 8" limbs, but the limbs may have quite a bit of taper and be 20' and started at 12-16".   My buyer credits appropriately. 

We're sending about 6-8k bdft a week this month, ok trees, 3-500 or so bdft/tree.  Place is a grapevine covered mess and lots of young leave trees (feller keeps shaking his head as we leave 18" trees).  I'll get a picture or two up tomorrow.

[nativewolf]

So the tract with the really nice walnut is closer to harvest and I'm a bit nervous.  We lined up a great feller, he's been cutting for over 35 years.



He had never seen such a dense stand of walnut.  Then there are the outliers not even in the stand, like this one.  You can see the machete below the tape.  That crotch is going to drive me crazy.  Cut 4' below it for a gun stocks or 6' below for tables or cut the crotch out to max the scale of the log; seems like it is still 30" at 32' clear.  Oh well.  First we have to take it down.

This week I am taking half of every day to mark and scale, super thick underbrush, wild rose, spice bush, grape vines, etc and we're doing a limit cut or 22" or greater and every tree with issues.  This means quite a bit of walking and looking to get to the walnuts and sometimes you get there and it is 21", on to the next.  Can only get 30 or so trees yesterday and today and I don't know if I'll be finished the main stand by Sunday.  Cutting should start Monday of next week.  Average tree is scaling about 400bdft, we try to get a bit more by taking limbs and all so we might end up with 450/tree.  Veneer logs are common, about 1/2 the butt logs a few 2nd logs too.  

Good news is I also found 2 40" Oaks that are nice and clear for 2 logs  so they'll be a bonus bit of $.  Not white oak unfortunately, some sort of red oak and not Northern Red Oak at that.  SRO or Black Oaks.  Still very very nice logs.  If I can't get the right price I'll hold them back and have them milled for QS materials.  

[Autocar]

Enjoy this thread a lot,everyone talking about getting seedlings I wonder if the nurserys are checked for walnut canker ?  Right now we arn't aloud to truck walnut across the Indiana  state line do to the canker scare. I think everyone should give it some good thought before bringing seedlings from out of state. Just my two cents !  

[nativewolf]

Really good point, I hope no one ships Walnut seedlings cross border.

[mike_belben]

Will you grow or cull that twisty coat hanger next to the biggn?

[nativewolf]

It's a hackberry so it will likely get sacrificed to help keep the trunk from popping the ground so hard that the trunk cracks.  

These big walnut trunks have a real tendency to crack in half.  Can still sell them but you cut value by 75%.  We sacrifice a lot of poplar, hickory, maple, hackberry etc to save walnut.

[mike_belben]

On a lottery ticket like that i would probably climb and top the whole dang tree down to a single stem and rope it over onto a limb mat, just to be sure it went perfect.

[nativewolf]

It is a beauty.  We might put a crane there and top it and rope it down with the crane.  But, we've got many like that and the crane makes quite the rut.  This site is wet.

[nativewolf]

So, finally got to cutting, weather has not been our friend as this is a rocky wet site, have to be very careful.


That's the first full day and half of big game kill on the ground, ready for bidders next Monday.

[nativewolf]

 

Just how nice are those trophy trees, when the walnut looks like decent yellow poplar...it is pretty darn nice walnut!

Some of these walnut are 18" in diameter 50' up the trunk to the first crotch.  That's a nice one for sure but not unique.  Some have crotch's 11 or 13 ' up the trunk.  What slabbing trees.  I mean they would be amazing table tops.  

[nativewolf]

 

Just posting how nice the forest looks, almost pure walnut in this section.  

The goal is to get 50 or so on the ground and then do sealed bids, while we cut the next batch.  Up to about 30 after 2 days.  By Friday we'll be there, 2 days off due to rain tomorrow.