Walnut has a lot of useful properties and is popular not only in cooking, but also in medicine and cosmetology, so it can be found almost everywhere. But for all its popularity and prevalence, not many gardeners know how and where it is better to plant a walnut on their plot.
There are two ways how you can plant a walnut: seeds and seedlings.
Planting a walnut seed
For planting it is necessary to select such nuts:
- The shell must not be soft and not too hard;
- with tightly fitting butts (edges) of the shell;
- ripe - it is easy to separate from the green shell (external pericarp);
- large size.
You can plant walnut seeds only for one year. The optimal time for their planting is autumn, right after harvesting.
Sequencing:
- Select the nuts to peel off the green shell and dry for 1-2 days in the sun;
- dig a hole 1 m deep;
- dug out the ground with humus and fall asleep back;
- seeds to deepen by 15-20 cm, rib down, making a square with a side of 20-25 cm.
But you can also start planting in spring, late April or early May. Then you need to do this:
- take the nuts out of the basement and select the planting material;
- in the open ground, prepare pits with a depth of 10 cm;
- Put the seeds in them on the rib and fill them with soil;
- water and in a year it will be possible to transplant them to a permanent place on the site.
Since when the walnut is propagated by seeds, the tree obtained may not possess the qualities of the mother tree, it is better to select the strongest seedlings from the grown seedlings and use it as a stock.
Planting a walnut seedlings
Unlike seeds, walnut seedlings should be planted early in the spring, before the buds swell.
How to do it:
- Prepare landing pits with a diameter of 1 m -1.2 m and a depth of 60 cm.
- In each deposit up to 15 kg of humus, 20 to 40 g of fertilizers (potassium and phosphorus) and 1 kg of lime.
- When planting, the root collar of the seedlings should remain 3-4 cm above the soil.
- When the pit falls asleep, compact the soil and water it well.
You can obtain a walnut seedling in several ways:
- to dig in the spring a two-year-old plant - to do it it is necessary accurately, without damaging the lateral roots and cutting the vertical root by 2/3, the slice to cover with clay;
- Buy a seedling - you will not know what nuts you will find until a few years.
But to get such walnuts as you want, it is better to plant a twig from the tree, the fruits of which you like, better in a year, on the planted seedling. But vaccination is a very time-consuming exercise, requiring certain knowledge, patience and accuracy. And if you do not have such knowledge, it is better to acquire the already grafted seedling.
Optimal place for planting walnuts
In addition to the question of how to plant a walnut, very often they ask where else.
When determining the landing site, one should follow such recommendations:
- The shadow from the nut should not fall on the site, and if it does, it is only for a short period of time.
- Nuts derived from seeds are best planted along the road to protect from dust, as the quality of the fruit may not satisfy (small, poorly cleaned).
- Nut prefer places where there is a constant moisture and partial shade.
Having purchased the grafted sapling, having determined the place where you plant your walnut, do not expect from it very fast fruit. Nuts begin to bear fruit only for 8-10 years after planting, but until this point it should be taken care of: water, fertilize and cut the crown. And if you regularly and correctly do this, then the nut can please you with the first fruits before - after 5 years.