News

Following on from participating in the Nut Panel at the ORFC this article appeared in the Guardian on the 9th January.

‘English farmers turning to cultivating nuts as climate heats’

The December course was postponed and has been rescheduled for a 1 day course on March 20th 2023, 9.00am to 4.00pm.

An update on this year’s season and other news

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We have gained funding from the Cotswold AONB to run courses on walnut growing

How to Grow English Walnuts for Profit

A comprehensive introduction to growing English Walnuts (Juglans regia) as a commercial crop.

The course is aimed at new or existing growers who wish to establish an orchard of cultivated walnuts for retail, there is no set minimum size for a commercial orchard, we would consider 20+ trees to be a reasonable small orchard.

The course covers site and cultivar selection, planting, growing and then harvest and markets for the nuts.  It is funded by the Cotswold AONB under their Farming in Protected Landscapes fund and as such is free to residents of the AONB who wish to establish a walnut orchard in the AONB.

The first two courses will be run as 2 x ½ days and will be on site at Burmington Farm, CV36 5AR on the edge of the Cotswold AONB.  We have a large orchard of English walnuts and other species of walnuts as well as harvesting and processing machinery.

Please enquire to Tom Tame in the first instance on farm@granayoils.co.uk or mobile 07816 674854.

If you live outside the AONB please contact me as well.

Course 1 –            Day 1                     Monday 5^th December 2022        10.00-2.00pm

                                Day 2                     Monday 12^th December 2022       10.00-2.00pm

Course 2 –            Day 1                     Monday 6^th February 2023          10.00-2.00pm

                                Day 2                     Monday 13^th February 2023           10.00-2.00pm

2022 has been another strange, if much better spring. Very dry with less than 25% of normal rainfall (irrigating already!)and although it was frosty on and off until min April it’s been generally Ok since then with only a few leaves catching a cold.

The regular frost has meant we have the odd situation of most of the earlier cultivars breaking bud but having delayed leaf growth, they’re now covered in juvenile leaves when most would be in full leaf. The later varieties like Fernor, Franquette and A117 Kesei will probably be not much later.

There are quiet a lot of male flowers nearing pollen drop on some cultivars and like Lara below they don’t have much leaf yet, female flowers are just appearing on Mars, Jupiter and Broadview but other varieties are later still (out of sync!).

The small new heartnuts (with some help from fleece) have faired better than most years and should get a decent season to put on growth and try and recover some of the lost last 4 years. A few new cultivars gone in this year and a few new ones will go in later this year and we’ll have 14 cultivars if they all survive.

Pecans, Hickories and Hicans all seem to be getting a decent start this year (again fleece has helped) and although they won’t catch up from previous years they should start putting on top growth now that the tap roots have really gone down. We intend to add another half a dozen Ultra Northern cultivars next year, our supplier is still struggling to get decent pecan rootstocks in Europe which has set back things 2 years.

Just planted 3 late leafing varieties on our highest bit of ground as a test for a future orchard.

We’re hoping the extra 30m will make a significant different for late spring frosts, time will tell but the last few years have shown this to be a good site.

The 3 trees are Franquette, Chandler and the red kernel Kardinal.

We’ve produced a brief newsletter of everything that’s happened this year and the services and products we now offer.

The aim is to do one or two a year giving updates on any new and interesting snippets on growing walnuts.

Planting 6 new Red Walnuts, 3 each of Kardinal and Purpurovy. Soil is still warm and ground isn’t wet!

Well after what has to be the oddest weather this spring and early summer we finally have some heat.  We’ve irrigated less than normal, a bit in March and then occasionally until this week and now probably quite regularily!

The cold April & May did for a lot of the male flowers, some of our seedling trees did the best but by the end of May nothing seemed to have male flowes but a lot of varieties had female flowers!

Lara (picture below) seems to have done the best and for young trees (in for 7 years) have quite a good crop, there are some Broadview, Buccaneer, Jupiter and the much younger Fernor & Fernette have some nuts.  The only Red variety with nuts is Red Seal but they’re all mostly very young trees. We have a few new varieties to plant this Autumn that are late into leaf (compared with most Red ones).

Finally we’re starting to see juvenile leaves on most varieties of walnut with Fernor & Lara & Bonifac & Kesei just about breaking the terminal bud.

I’d estimate flowering will be 3-5 weeks late this year but as long as we have a reasonable summer we should be ok for a good crop as it’s actually rained quite a lot and warmed up somewhat.

The Carya & Heartnuts are also breaking bud although they all started early in April and then got stopped by the cold weather.

Fingers crossed that this year we have no late May frosts!