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rolf_jacobs

Stark Bros. nut trees

rolf_jacobs
14 years ago

I am considering ordering a 'Bountiful' Butternut and 'Westerfield' Heartnut from Stark Bros. Has anyone had experience with either of these nuts? Do they produce and do the nuts taste good? What about on-going maintenance?

Thanks.

Rolf

Comments (4)

  • lucky_p
    14 years ago

    They make really nice shade trees. Be aware that they're probably grafted onto eastern black walnut rootstock, so juglone toxicity may be an issue for other plants in their root zone.
    'Bountiful' has been shown, by DNA analysis, to be a hybrid of butternut and Japanese walnut/heartnut - everything about it looks butternut, but the J.ailantifolia genes probably confer some degree of resistance to butternut blight. A good thing.
    I have an open-pollenated seedling of 'Bountiful' - no idea what the pollen parent was, but the nut looked like a typical butternut(thick shell, low kernel%), and everything about the tree looks 'butternut' to me. No nuts produced yet, but it did produce a few catkins last year.
    I have no info on Westfield heartnut - and there's no guarantee that the nuts they display in their photo are actually from the Westfield cultivar. There's a lot of variation in cracking characteristics within heartnut varieties - some release their kernel intact, in one piece, while other 'pinch' the kernel. All in all, though, they're easier to crack and pick out than just about any other tree nut. Most I've had opportunity to sample were fairly bland.
    I have some doubts about their claims of nut production in 2-3 years, but since they're offering most of their grafted nut trees as RPM models(I suspect that Forrest Keeling Nursery is probably growing and grafting for them), I would anticipate that they'll have better transplant survival and probably come into bearing sooner than the typical bareroot nut tree.

  • groall
    14 years ago

    Have two trees planted probably 7 year ago, now they are probably 30 feet or more tall and wide, very tropical looking, good shade and had nuts the last few years....the nuts are little heart shaped things maybe an inch and a quarter wide and tall...there is some white meat in them but it is going to take a lot of nuts to make a meal, nothing special about the flavor, maybe a gallon or two of nuts..other then a nice looking tree, I think the space would be better used to plant a nice English Walnut...large nuts, thin shell and I have two trees, half the size of the Heartnuts which produced three five gallon buckets of very nice nuts..good flavor and lots of meat in them......

  • rolf_jacobs
    Original Author
    14 years ago

    Thanks for the info.

    The reason I'm interested in these particular trees is that I am looking for nut trees that would work in my climate and these trees seem able to take cold weather. I'd really like to put in pecans since they seem to produce so well but I'm not sure they'd work in my climate.

  • lucky_p
    14 years ago

    Rolf,
    There are a number of northern/midwestern/far-northern pecan varieties that should do just fine for you in NE Ohio.
    Nolin River Nut Tree Nursery and England's Orchard and Nursery(both have websites, and both are operated by friends & fellow KNGA members) have a number of named-variety nut trees that should be suitable for planting in your locale.
    Check out the Northern Nut Growers Assn. website - and the OH NGA(contact info should be on the NNGA site)

    Here is a link that might be useful: NNGA