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Friday, September 26, 2014

Pecan Cultivars ripening by September 26th

Colby, 26 Sept. 2014

    Our beautiful, early-fall weather continued this week and more pecan cultivars have split open their shucks. Today I found that Colby, Grotjan, Henning, Peruque, and Witte had ripened since the last time I checked (photos at right and below).
    Henning is usually one of our first pecan cultivars to shuck split, but this year it ripened about two weeks later that normal. This delay in ripening was caused by the April 15th killing freeze. At the time of the freeze, Henning had broken bud and even started to push out some leaves. All exposed green tissue was killed and the tree had to start growth again from secondary buds. The regrowth did produce a few pistillate blooms but the whole flowering, pollination, and nut development process occurred two weeks later than normal. So it is not surprising that Henning's shuck split ended up two weeks late this year.
   
Grotjan, 26 Sept. 2014

Henning, 26 Sept. 2014

Peruque, 26 Sept. 2014
Witte, 26 Sept. 2014