Friday, May 18, 2012

Spraying Walnuts

Walnut sprouts have just reached the stage where they can be successfully treated with glyphosate herbicide.  Walnuts are the most frustrating of the many plants that I control through use of herbicides.  They begin to grow late in the spring and then grow so rapidly that they quickly become too large to safely spray without killing everything in the surrounding area.

Each walnut was marked with a red flag as it was cut, so I would be able to find the sprouts now.  The warm temperatures early in the spring caused many plants in the vicinity of the walnuts to grow remarkably fast.  The sprouts are difficult to find in the mass of vegetation.

The compound leaves of the walnut spread far to each side of the stalk.  The small leaflets make it difficult to spray without also covering neighboring plants.  Fortunately, the area most affected by walnuts is thick with Tall Fescue and other farmland relics that also need to be eliminated.

Many walnut sprouts don’t spread their leaves until they reach heights in excess of one foot.  This means that you can’t safely spray on days that have any noticeable wind.  You also can’t spray if the leaves are wet with dew or if you are expecting rain.  So to successfully spray walnuts, you must wait for those few days that the sprouts are at the optimum size and hope you can find a few hours when it’s not dewy, windy or rainy.  That can be awfully hard to do.

My area of walnut infestation is in the field directly behind the house.  Since I look at this field every day, I’m trying hard to create a view without invading walnut trees. 

The walnuts in the field came from nuts produced by trees in the yard.  These trees were planted by the previous owner and are one of the worst trees to put in a lawn.  I finally got tired of dealing with the nuts and stopped mowing around the walnut trees.  Squirrels now do me the favor of carrying the nuts off and burying them all over the place.  I know that some people have trouble growing walnuts from seed, but at Blue Jay Barrens all you need to do to get a seedling is put the nut on the ground.


  1. Maybe you should dig them up and sell them. Black walnut trees cost a fortune. I wish they grew that easily in my yard.

  2. HI Steve...I saw that snake head, so I am coming today to give you a hard time for making fun of my typo ; }, and not warning me about the snake ..your slipping up!! I was tired, and couldn't even remember if I had published it or not the next morning : }
    That's my excuse besides Raccoon's knocking on the door!!
    Haven't seen her for two nights now, but I have a sneaking suspension it is in the hollow apple tree like a few years back...having babies ..oh dear what can you do, that's nature!!

    Looks like you had quite a few nutty squirrels...there looks like a lot of little red flags in the field ; }
    My neighbor had one grow in his back yard didn't see it in a grove of trees until it started dropping nuts...ya the Squirrels love it..he got tired of it and had it cut down!

  3. Hi Mark. I'd probably have to charge a fortune for the trees after I tacked on a fair amount for my labor with a shovel.

    Hi Grace. I wasn't sure if that was a typo or if you were using a Maine word that I wasn't familiar with. I find that it's sometimes fun to make up new words for things.
    The snake picture was to test your eyes. I figured you would see the tiny picture in your side bar and know there was a snake only a click away. I hope your eyes are recovering as they should.

  4. From the look of things, the previous owner of the house really wanted an orchard of nothing but walnut. That doesn't exactly sound like paradise to me, but hey whatever floats your boat. You could make a fortune off of the nuts, though. Good luck, hope your home isn't eventually overrun by them!!

    -Tony Salmeron

  5. Hi Tony. Yes, they did have a love of Walnuts.