With a healthy, thriving walnut tree in your own garden, you can look forward to rich harvests from the second year after planting. This guide provides you with the most important information and tips for walnut harvesting.
Walnuts can be easily picked up from the ground
When is the best time to harvest the walnuts
As soon as the fruits of your walnut tree have a green-brown and cracked shell, they are ready (to harvest). This is generally the case from the end of September - in short, the walnut harvest season begins in late summer or early autumn. Incidentally, ripe walnuts often fall from the tree by themselves. Otherwise, shaking it gently will help.
Practical tips for walnut harvesting
In commercial cultivation, the walnuts are harvested with special vibrating and sweeping machines. However, you do not need any equipment to harvest the fruit in your own garden, not even a ladder or a net with an extendable telescopic handle. All you need are your hands and gardening gloves for protection. Slip on the latter when you harvest your walnuts.
Do not use force to knock the walnuts off the tree, otherwise you may damage the tree shoots and thus adversely affect next year's harvest. It's better to just wait until the nuts fall down on their own. If you run out of patience, you can gently shake the tree to help a little.
If the walnuts are lying in the grass, all you have to do is collect them. In order to make this act as uncomplicated as possible, it is advisable to mow the grass in good time (before the walnuts are harvested). Otherwise you have to look for the fruit in or between tall stalks - unnecessary effort. Of course, you should only collect or enjoy intact walnuts without exception.
Here are some extra tips for walnut harvesting:
- Collect the fruit regularly - usually once a day, on rainy days even twice a day (morning and afternoon). This is how you keep uninvited guests away from the tree. Left-over walnuts offer an ideal breeding ground for pests and invite them to multiply quickly.
- Humans aren't the only beings on planet Earth who appreciate walnuts; Mice and squirrels also love the inclosure fruits. So be altruistic and give some of your nuts to the animals (especially if you have a very bounty harvest yourself).
- If you don't want to eat your walnuts immediately, but want to preserve them, you can't avoid drying the nuts immediately after harvesting - in a warm and dark room.