Eating nuts can be a healthy way to satisfy your late-night cravings for a simple snack. Nuts, especially walnuts, pack in a lot of health benefits aside from tasting ridiculously good. Learning about the different techniques on how to care for and when to harvest walnuts can be a great way to source your own walnuts for daily consumption. Walnuts can be part of your daily diet. They are rich in many nutrients that can help you become healthier.
Walnuts contain omega-3 and healthy fats. These sources allow you to provide much-needed nutrition to your brain and heart, and can also minimize inflammation. Aside from this, walnuts also contain protein and fiber, which help in building muscle and maintaining a good digestive system. To top it all off, walnuts are also great when paired with a lot of dishes. Apart from being a good type of nut to snack on, they also taste great with desserts and other meat dishes.
Aside from these mentioned nutritional benefits, walnuts also contain calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, and folate. So, it can also help in strengthening and maintaining your bones. Iron helps with growth and development, getting enough hemoglobin across the body and making sure everything is in good working order. It also helps in energizing the body through the electrolytes in potassium, as well as keeping all organs, tissues, and cells healthy.
Walnuts are also known to combat “LDL” or bad cholesterol in particular and also lower your cholesterol levels in general. This protects and strengthens your artery walls, making sure that no plaques form inside your arteries, causing blockages in your blood flow. Your risk of heart disease and a blood clot that can lead to heart attack lessens by at least 50% just by consuming five servings of walnuts a week.
Walnut tree
Like most nuts and organic snacks, walnuts are also sourced from the walnut tree. Learning about this tree can help you grow your own source of walnuts from your own backyard. Trees are also helpful to the environment, so acquiring knowledge in this area practically has no downside to it, especially since you get to have your own organic source of fresh nuts to eat for a snack or for any other meal.
The walnut fruit itself is contained in the walnut shell that most of us see in groceries or supermarkets. The said container or husk is thick, and hard, though the edible nut inside is not as hard. There are both male and female walnut trees.
The trees are known to have their own share of long, green, and lush leaves. They actually are good options for a more aesthetically pleasing environment. The tree itself can grow to a height of around twenty meters, which is considered to be pretty tall when compared to other smaller trees. Aside from its height, the walnut tree also produces long, thick branches themselves.
Walnut trees are also not limited only to just one type of tree, since they come in more than just one species. An example of a species of walnut trees is the Andean Walnut, which is known to grow slower than most but can grow to great heights. The make and color of its branches and bark are red and brown, while the canopy is shaped in the form of an oval. The height can reach up to around fifty feet (around 15 meters) and is native to Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
Another type of walnut tree is the Black Walnut. The black walnut originally came from the countries in the Eastern United States and can grow up to heights of fifty to one-hundred feet. They are especially liked by some because of the walnut fruit it produces. This black walnut is considered to be one of the more delicious types of walnut and is characterized by the ridged gray-black make and shape of the tree branches.
Another type of walnut tree is Butternut. With this type of tree, the height it reaches is around sixty feet tall. It is smaller when compared to the Black Walnut tree, and produces a lesser amount of walnuts when compared to the Black Walnut tree. It is mostly seen in countries around North America and is considered to be a bit difficult to grow.
The point is, you can have a variety of walnuts that can give a different look to your garden landscape. The varying colors, heights, and shapes can create interesting textures and beauty.
Fresh walnuts
Having fresh walnuts to eat can be a good experience, especially since you are sure that the said walnut actually came from a walnut tree, and has not been altered by any genetically-modifying fertilizers or inducers. This is as organic as walnut can get, which is why learning about certain procedures and techniques on when to harvest walnuts will help you achieve this.
Sometimes it is difficult to believe that you can grow your own source of nuts in the confines of your own home, but with more information available and more people trying new things, it is no wonder that information such as this is becoming accessible to more people such as yourself.
When to pick walnuts for pickling
Walnuts can be pickled to preserve it for later days, such as other vegetables and food that are pickled to preserve them. But for those who ask when to pick walnuts for pickling, the more important question should be, when should you harvest them? To answer that question, most sites advise you to harvest walnuts once they fall to the ground, and not when they are still on the branches of the walnut tree. Collecting walnuts only involves getting those that have already fallen. Once collected, these nuts will eventually soften over time and can be opened and cracked by those who want to eat them.
Cracking a walnut open involves de-hulling, which can become difficult if the amount of walnuts is too many for any one person to handle. Thus, in case you have more than just a few to de-hull, the best way is to use the wheels of a car to spin around trays of walnuts to loosen them up. If worms are encountered as you open the walnuts up, you do not need to worry since they do not affect the health and nutrition of said walnut.
Walnut Care Tips
Walnuts need full sun to partial sun to grow. Plant them in fertile, soil that drains well and also receives a lot of sunlight for optimal growth. You have to make sure that the piece of land you plant these nuts in is deep enough for the tree to grow its roots. The soil has to be permeable up to 5 feet deep for optimal root growth.
In terms of watering, young walnuts need watering once a week from spring all the way through late summer. For the first three years of growth, walnuts need around 3 to 5 gallons of water in the irrigation periods. Use a garden hose or a soaker hose to water.
Water grown walnuts every couple of weeks. You have to be careful, though, as getting the trunk and lower branches wet increases the risk of the crown and root disease. But make sure that you water the tree enough to get 3 to 6 feet of the soil’s depth watered.
Also, try to keep weeds away from your walnut tree. Weeds compete for nutrients and water. They also tend to attract pests. Mulching might be a helpful way in keeping weeds away while also keeping the area around the tree moist and hydrated.
Pruning is a great method to keep your walnut tree healthy and productive. Experts strongly suggest pruning your tree during the winter season, when the tree is dormant. Prune the tree just before the leaves drop. Using a pair of clean, sharp shears, cut off any diseased or dead parts of the tree.
Conclusion
Walnuts are a common nut staple in most households. Some people are not aware, however, that these may be harvested from trees from which they grow. Learning when to harvest walnuts can help you obtain the best-tasting walnuts that nature has to offer, all while being able to maintain and plant your own walnut tree in your backyard. Walnuts are a good plant to try your hand at, even as a beginner when it comes to owning a garden.
Walnuts provide a lot of nutritional value to your diet, and can even be eaten daily to help satisfy the protein and fiber requirements your body needs on a daily basis. Apart from that, walnuts are also great when added to different food, such as desserts, cakes, and others. All it takes is a little patience and understanding on when’s the best time to harvest and plant your walnut tree.