Northern Pecans

Friday, November 15, 2024

Picturing nut size

For the first time in 3 years, we have received enough summer rainfall to promote a more normal development of nut size. This fact gave me the opportunity to photograph all of the cultivars I have named from my pecan breeding program and compare them to Kanza, a widely propagated pecan cultivar. This past summer, while shopping in a local home center, I found a very useful measuring tool that should make illustrating pecan nut size easy. This measuring tool is marked in both inches and centimeters (1 inch = 2.54 cm).

Kanza, 2024

As you look over the photos below, not only can you judge overall nut size, but you can also see general shape, relative nut diameter, typical shell markings, and the often characteristic shell apex appearance. The cultivars below are presented in alphabetical order.

Caney, 2024


Earlton, 2024

Labette, 2024


Liberty, 2024

Pleasanton, 2024

St. Paul, 2024


Thayer, 2024

Thursday, October 24, 2024

Fall color in the pecan grove

Kanza tree, 24 Oct. 2024

Most years we experience a hard freeze in late October that causes the complete defoliation of green leaves from our trees. This year, the combination of warm fall days and drought conditions has caused pecan leaves to remain on the trees and turn golden yellow (photo above).


Kanza nut cluster, 24 Oct. 2024

A hard freeze will also kill pecan shucks, turning them black, and promoting shucks to fully open. This year is different. The shucks are slowing drying exposing the ripe pecans inside. In the photo at right, you can see that the tips of the shucks are fully dry and have turned brown while areas of the shuck closer to the base of the nut are still green. These Kanza nuts should shake out of the tree easily and separate from the shucks allowing me to start harvesting tomorrow.

Labette, 14 Oct. 2024

During early October, I continued to monitor the shuck split dates of all the seedling trees in my breeding block. Labette, one of the cultivars I developed, ripened on 14 Oct. 2024 (photo above). While I was observing shuck-split this year, I observed that the deeper we descended into drought this fall to more shuck-split was delayed on later ripening clones. Labette provides a good example. Labette matured on October 9 in 2023 but 5 days later in 2024.

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

Pecan cultivars ripening in late September

I continue to monitor shuck-split for the pecan cultivars I have growing on my farm. Even though it seems like we are sliding back into drought conditions this fall, nut size and kernel quality appears far better than what we harvested in 2022 and 2023.

Cultivars ripening during late September are pictured below.


Kanza, 27 Sept. 2024


Waccamaw, 27 Sept. 2024


Yates 68, 27 Sept. 2024

Hark, 30 Sept. 2024

Major, 30 Sept. 2024

Shepherd, 30 Sept. 2024

St. Paul, 30 Sept. 2024

Sunday, September 22, 2024

Pecan shuck-split underway


Earlton, 13 Sept. 2024

Each Fall, I scout my pecan orchard to record the date of 50% shuck-split for each cultivar and breeding selection. As usual, Earlton was the first cultivar to split shuck (photo at right). The first indication of shuck-split is not terribly dramatic. A hairline crack appears in the shuck along the sutures. The shuck will need time to dry a bit before the shuck actually opens up (see below).

Earlton, 20 Sept. 2024

One week after I first noticed shuck-split on Earlton, the shucks had dried enough to fully reveal the nut inside the shuck (photo at left). I even noticed one Earlton pecan ready to fall to the ground.

The photos below represent all the pecans that have ripened during the past week. They are published in order of ripening. As a general observation, pecan ripening seems earlier than normal this year.

Earlton, Caney, Liberty and Thayer are cultivars originating from my breeding project. Selections numbered starting with "KT" are unnamed clones from that same breeding program.