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Get cracking with nuts

Clive Simms gives advice on which ones to grow and tips on planting and cultivating

Nut growing is so satisfying. You are planting attractive trees that provide tasty and highly nutritious food that’s expensive to buy. Although growing nuts is often dismissed by British gardeners as requiring too much space for very little reward, this view is overly pessimistic; a little knowledge of what to do and how to avoid the pitfalls puts you onto the road to success.
Although many nut bearing trees will grow in our climate, the nut trees most likely to give success are the common walnut, chestnut, hazel and almond. Whichever you decide to try, it is essential to obtain named varieties, specifically selected as good producers of quality nuts. If you wish to grow apples you wouldn’t simply sow pips and hope for the best, and this holds good for nut growing too.

Almonds

The almond (Prunus dulcis) is usually planted as an ornamental tree. It’s rarely grown as a source of fresh almonds due to its early flowering habit when frosts are common and pollinating bees are loath to venture out. It’s also prone to peach leaf curl although some trees appear resistant, or even immune, to this disease. Despite this, experience has shown that useful quantities of nuts are possible as long as you accept that cropping may be somewhat irregular.
For the best quality nuts, plant good sorts like ‘Macrocarpa’, a white flowered variety with mild, soft shelled nuts. Unfortunately, it is self-sterile and does require an unrelated almond nearby to set nuts. For those short on space both ‘Lauranne’ and ‘Mandaline’ are self-fertile and will fruit when grown alone. Other good choices include ‘Ai’, ‘Ardechoise’, ‘Ferraduel’, ‘Ferragnes’ and ‘Robijn’.
Almonds are usually grown on the plum rootstock ‘St. Julien A’ in Britain, but be aware that imported plants may be grafted onto vigorous ‘Myran’ or seedling almond rootstock, which give much larger trees.

Walnuts

The common walnut (Juglans regia) is a good choice for the British Isles. The important points to bear in mind with regard to selecting which varieties to buy are:
• Time of producing leaves: All walnuts tend to leaf out or begin growing and flowering quite early in spring when they’re susceptible to damage by spring frosts. The best trees are those late to produce their leaves so at less risk.
• Pollination: Many trees require another pollinating tree nearby, although some trees are known to be self-fertile and give adequate crops when grown alone.
• Disease resistance: Walnut trees are prone to a couple of leaf diseases when grown in damp climates like ours and the effects may be so severe as to almost defoliate the tree. Some varieties show a high degree of resistance to this problem.

Most walnut trees require space and ultimately make a medium sized tree of around 12m (39ft) to 15m (50ft) high and there are no dwarfing rootstocks available to reduce their vigour.
If space is limited then walnuts can be repeatedly ‘tipped’ or pruned throughout the growing season when five or six leaves have grown. However, any lapse in the pruning routine will allow the bush to quickly get out of hand. A better solution would be to plant the varieties ‘Hansen’, ‘Lara’ and ‘Rita’ which are all relatively small growing.
Other good but full sized walnuts are ‘Broadview’, ‘Buccaneer’, ‘Fernette’, ‘Fernor’, ‘Jupiter’, ‘Ronde do Montignac’ and ‘Saturn’.

 

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