Sister collected some nuts near where I was working. Asked me if they’re specifically Shagbark or not. What do I know? Not much. I do know the easiest way to get an answer What say the hoarders? Are they shag?
They certainly are Hickory nuts. Look identical to the nuts I find under our Shagbark Hickory here in Iowa. Try some they are delicious. Sent from my SM-G930VL using Tapatalk
Sure are. Get yourself about a half bushel of them and make a hickory nut pit. YUM!!! Use the same recipe as a pecan pie and replace pecans for the hickory nuts. I have to say, shelling enough hickory nuts to make 1 pie is a real job! Dem bad boys is like bustin' cement wit ah rubber mallet!
Yeah, they sure look like the shag nuts we have around here. Ralphie Boy , in didn't know you could make a pie with them. I do know they are super tough to crack though. I found out years ago that squirrels were much more adept at cracking hickory nuts than I was.
No pie. She wants to grow them. Rare in our area and the biggest one got knocked down by an oak. Little late in our lives to be planting trees but hey why not.
I know they don't take well to transplanting. The taproot is tough to get, and any damage to the taproot usually kills the tree. The taproot is super long on these, longer than the tree is tall.
As a kids we used to pick and sell them by the bucket. My Mom has the patience to shell them and makes one heck of a pie.
"A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never enjoy." If I'm not mistaken, the best way to start them is right about now, in a bag of wet peat moss, in the fridge. They need the cold to kick the germination. When you see green shoots coming off it, you can move it to soil.
Thanks for the quote and planting instructions. I’ll get going on that. Think it’ll be my fridge that gets donated to the cause
I cracked bushels of them when I was kid. We always had hickory nuts in the basement. Dad had a corner block up on end and a stool over by the furnace to crack on with a hammer. We always picked up under the trees that were easiest to crack first. We had a couple trees at the edge of the yard that came out in halves with just a tap of the hammer, but some were more difficult. The Hickory nuts were still a lot easier than Black Walnuts. Mom made lots of Hickory nut pies and many evenings one of us would go down there and crack out a bunch for the evening snack. Potato or corn chips... NOT in Dad's house!!! LOL They tend to crack easier and the meat comes out better when you hold them up on the shorter side instead of just laying them flat and MASHING them. They're best when they have dried for a couple months after the hulls come off. The ones labeled Porter were easiest to crack. Thinner shells and the meat comes out in halves more often. Those were the ones we looked for first. Dad's woods was mostly Shagbark Hickory and Beech trees. There were tons of squirrels in there and Dad didn't allow squirrel hunting on our land. There were times they were so thick you could easily have hit 3 or 4 fox squirrels with a single 12 ga shot.
Those squirrels are aggressive and will take nearly all of the hickory nuts. That's even with me plucking a few squirrels off a week. The hickory nuts are the first taken by the squirrels, then the beech nuts, then the oak acorns last.
For planting them to grow, would it perhaps be best to place them in the freezer for a week or two first?
I see lots of talk about cracking hickory nuts. If you don't have a nut cracker, a vise can work much better than a hammer and it is easier on the fingers. For getting the meat out, it is difficult to beat an actual nut pick. But one can also be made out of an old table fork.
