Author: Tom Tame

Hot Box grafting fun

Another group out of the hot box and this one I left a few days too long, now I have juvenile foliage to protect from temperature fluctuation, must be frost free and not too much variation and temperature spikes.

This is one of the issues with hot pipe/boxes, callus can form pretty quickly (7-10 days in my system) but it does wake the stocks and scions up very quickly, if they stayed dormant it would be easier to handle them for the next two months.

In the foreground some juglans sigilata, 2 on j.nigra and 2 on some larger repurposed j.regia as an experiment, no difference in callusing.

Surplus trees for sale

We have some surplus bare-root stock for sale of Ronde de Montignac, Lara & Tulare. These vary from 60cm to 1.5m, Lara are very stocky smaller trees and the others taller of the same age.

Collection only £20 each. Call Tom 07816 674854

Juglans regia Meylanaise trees

We have a small surplus of large Meylanaise bare-root trees available this winter. We sourced some 200-250cm trees from France for our orchards and have some surplus, some are actually closer to 350cm.

Please contact us if you are interested, collection only.

New Washing Line

This June we started installing a new washing line for walnuts from AMB Rousset in France. As it had to fit into a specific part of the old barns and link to the existing drier set-up a bit of creative thinking was needed to come up with a layout that worked, we still had to move the drier though which was fun.

The new set-up can handle 2 Tonnes per hour although we’re unlikely to need to do it that fast. Due to our harvesting methods at the moment we end up with a lot of husk both on and with the harvested nuts so we have to wash a bit more slowly, the new washer dehusks and washes and we also have a stick separator in the line to remove the larger rubbish.

As we progress to self-propelled harvesting system we’ll get more sticks and much less loose husk which will speed things up, the cleanest batch we did this year went through at easily a tonne per hour.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DPG6DtijtMM

Bare Root Orders

Deadline for orders for bare-root commercial cultivars is Sunday 9th November, we envisage getting trees at the end of the Month or Wk1 of December.

All these trees are collection only due to their size, nominally 1.2-2m but last year some cultivars were 2.5m+.

Chanbler, Ferette, Fernor, Franquette, Lara, Tulare, Ronde de Montignac

I have some small Cyril & Meylanaise for pollination in the ground here and additionally I will have some 2-2.5m Meylanaise from the Pepinoix nursery in France due in December. These have been sourced specifically for our plantings and the Fernor which seem to flower into mid June here with no pollination. I had to order a decent quantity to make shipping viable so contact me if you would like a few, this is a one off at this stage until we can get a regular supply.

2025 Drought Challenges

This year is becoming a more serious drought than the hot summer of 2022.  Then we had continuous rain until early May and then no rain here to speak of until late September, less than 50mm in 4 months.

This year we’ve had 120mm since December, 15mm in the last 4 weeks or so and our clay ground is now cracked like the grand canyon wherever it’s been wetter in the recent past.  On top of our ridge and furrow we’re seeing cracks a foot deep that you can put your foot in.

For older trees that have their roots down there is less of an issue, a little irrigation every week and they’ll be ok if a little parched and not growing much now, but for the young trees it can be terminal as they’re roots systems are literally left hanging in hot air.

To that end I’ve been running around shovelling top soil into the cracks wherever I can so that when irrigated the soil retains moisture around those root systems, we’ll lose some newly planted trees but not too many.

The biggest issue may be the check to the young trees and the restriction of root systems, will they recover enough to grow properly another year?

Our drip irrigation is sufficient where the soil is solid but in reality with a year like this a bigger supply of water to each tree with a Nelson R5 type spinning sprinkler would be required and that would mean a much higher flow rate than our water pipes can supply.  On top of that how would we protect them from the sheep and would the water cost be too high?

This isn’t a route we would want to go down and once the trees are established we shouldn’t need to unless we go for a heavily fertigated system like most of the commercial orchards around the world, is it even sustainable?  The trees would certainly have a very short shelf life compared to historic natural plantings in the UK.