In 2024 we have a fuller range of nuts trees, some available now but most in September or December for bare-root trees.
Although we’ve selected these trees for their fruiting qualities many also make spectacular trees.
We do graft a small number of the more unusual trees here and will expand that as we get more scion wood (and more consistent results!).
These trees are sourced from a couple of specialist nurseries in the Netherlands, De Smallekamp who hold a Dutch National collection of Carya and De Acht Plagen who between them have a vast range of specialist and rare fruiting nuts in the Juglandaceae family.
New Cultivars and Red Kernels
Over the last 8 years I’ve sourced as many cultivars as I can that were of potential interest for either commercial orchards or unusual nuts.
That includes cultivated forms of the other walnut species and Red Kernelled walnuts of which we’ve tried about 18 here and grow 15 currently, although there are a good number more out there. Red nuts almost all bud break early in March or at least by Wk1 of April apart from a few notable exceptions, Kardinal and Purpurovy (and maybe Red Moravian).
Our micro-climate here means we experience late spring frosts most years so often the red ones get frosted, this year they all escaped but we think in the future the two cultivars mentioned will be the most successful, to that end we’ll continue to supply those when we can, other cultivars once sold will be special order only.
We have a largest selection of Heartnuts this year we’ve ever had, some new to us and all quite difficult to source every year, the same with the black walnuts (1 new one) and butternuts, I have a few more in the pipeline for the future but it’s only ever very small quantities until our trees get larger.
Of the new English walnuts we have enough of A118, Fertignac, Jupanesti, Milotai 10 and Tiszacsécsi 83 to sell some, Fertignac in particular could be thought of as a commercial option we think and we have a good number grafted in the UK.
This year we have sourced other very late pollinating cultivars to trial here and hope to be able to release a few in the future as we think they will be beneficial in our climate where flowering times are more variable.
We also have a small quantity of Jupiter and Mars this year which have proved to be reliable here and have good sized crackable nuts with good flavour, Mars also seems to pollinate quite late some years. Both also did well in the drought of 2022.
We aim to offer a good selection of different Juglans regia cultivars, the main desert nuts (normal English Walnut) will generally be the larger Bulgarian grown cultivars and the smaller winter grafted trees are generally the rarer walnuts;
Red kernels, Dwarf trees, Giant Nuts, Heartnuts, Buartnuts, Black walnuts, Butternuts, Pecans, Hickories, Hicans.
The availability of many of these is rarely consistent year on year, we do try to get the same Heartnut cultivars for example but scion wood can be limited and we might wait a couple of years to get the same ones.