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Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Kanza nut yield for 2015

    Kanza has become one of the most popular cultivars across many northern pecan states. Back in 1995, we established a three-acre block of Kanza trees and I'm sure glad we did. In 2015, the trees in this block produced a great crop of nuts (photo at left). 

    Just before shaking and nut harvest you could see the the 2015 Kanza crop was going to be a good one. The trees produced nuts throughout each tree's canopy (photo at left).

     After cleaning our Kanza crop and weighing the nuts, we learned just how well these trees performed. Twenty years after starting a new orchard from seed and grafting the resulting seedlings to Kanza, we harvested over 1500 lbs. of pecans per acre (Table below).
    In looking over the table let me point out a few things. First off, you can see how drought during 2011 and 2012 impacted both total yield and average nut weight.  With the return of normal rainfall starting in 2013, nut yield steadily increased during the period of 2013-2015. This increase in yield occurred even as we removed trees using our gradual thinning plan. When the first thinning is complete, we will have removed 72 trees within the three acre block.