Does anyone propagate walnut trees?

Hello everyone. I have access to a walnut tree. I am not entirely sure what species. It looks like Black or English walnut, but also looks like butternut (pictures attached). Every year it fruits and every year the local squirrels feast on them. Usually just sitting on the branches and going nuts leaving a huge shell pile.

I would like to get in on these this year and save some seeds to sprout as saplings. I would also like to take a clone cutting to practice that as well but have minimal expertise with this.  I also wouldn't mind tasting some, but I have no idea when they're ready. the squirrels seems to just take them whenever.

The book I have on seeds (Seed to Seed) doesn't have a tree section. I need to remedy this.

My grandma used to take the black walnuts still in their husk, drop them on the ground and tamp them in with her foot.  Of course her ground was a sand loam mix as that definitely wouldn't work here, but generally the next spring she would have a walnut sapling growing there.  In her later years we built a flower bed in her front yard and she used to enjoy watching the squirrels play in it until all the walnuts started sprouting.  I've never tried propagating them from cuttings but I'm sure someone here can give you some insight on that.

As for the taste, black walnuts are horrendous to me, but grandma used to shell and sell them by the pound and never had enough to meet demand.  I know one time she had a few in a dish and I mistakenly thought they were English walnuts and popped a handful in my mouth.  Didn't take me long to spit them out.

growing walnuts from seed is easy if you can protect them from rodents over the winter. i haven’t heard of cuttings from walnuts ever being very easy.

i love black walnuts and vastly prefer them to english walnuts - but if they aren’t hulled quickly enough they can pick up some bitterness from the hull.

Step 1: Have a walnut tree
Step 2: Have squirrels
Step 3: spend your summer weeding walnut seedlings out of EVERYTHING.

Honestly, I would just plant a few nuts in the ground in the fall anywhere you want a tree. My understanding is they don't transplant well, and need cold stratification (aka a winter outside) to germinate. They can be slow to germinate, I am still finding relatively new seedlings and it is July - I didn't have any in May or early June. I have never tried to graft/root a walnut.  Typical rule of thumb is planting depth is 2-3X the seed size which is consistent with the holes I see our squirrels make.

I'm not entirely sure it is black walnut specifically. All the identification guides I found say they have a few different features. I primarily want to get saplings because I'm renting this place and cannot do much with the grounds but would still like to have some trees ready to go into the ground when I do get my own land. I figure I can sell decent sized potted saplings to help speed that along.

While yes I hoped the squirrels would plant them, that doesn't seem to be the case. The tree has been here at least 30 years but this is the only walnut I've seen exploring around. I think the gluttons just consume them all. I'll still try and seed a few around locally where they wont get pruned easily.

where are you located? it doesn’t look like the black walnuts i’m used to. seeing a nutshell will help identify. your location/climate may also inform the the best method of stratification.

South east Idaho. None of the fruits are close to ripe but i can break into one if it will still show well.

no, we won’t be able to see the shell exterior clearly until the hull is soft enough to separate cleanly…when the nuts are ripe.

I found some hulls from last year. A little weathered but I hope they will still suffice.

those look like english/persian walnuts.

Those look like the walnuts we have around here, too. English, like Greg said.

If you rake the leaves and nuts into a pile in the fall and leave it sitting over winter, you can dig through it the next year and pick out the germinated nuts to plant into pots. The younger seedling don't transplant well, but after a year or two in a big pot (sink into the ground or mound snow up around pots over winter), they generally transplant fine in early spring. If you're trying to transplant young seedlings rooted in the ground, take as much soil as you can around the tree so you don't disturb the roots at all. Go way farther out than you think you need to. Then go a bit farther.

My mum has them coming up all over her yard. She's tried transplanting some small ones to better locations and they usually die. The ones she just cuts down almost always come back from the root and are extremely difficult to kill 😂

Blaine Wulf wrote: I would also like to take a clone cutting to practice that as well but have minimal expertise with this.  

The most important thing is to properly desinfect your tools, you don't want to go around spreading dieseases.
I you cannot properly sanitize, there are one-use tools that you dispose of after use.

The battle of the nuts has begun. The squirrels have starting stealing nuts before fall sets in BEFORE they drop the the ground. Should i start cutting them off the tree so i get some of them or just let them feast for a little bit more?
I presume the squirrels know when they're ripe enough and have chosen to start eating them now rather than later. I rarely see them store them, just sit in the tree raining husk down.

I've propagated Walnut trees, and documented it in my blog, with photos.
Your photo indicates a regular Persian Walnut tree.

Squirrels are notorious for cleaning off nut trees, but they also forget where they hide all their nuts, so I am surprised you don't have at least a few young trees coming up every Spring.

Walnuts have deep taproots, so they don't like being transplanted.

If you do manage to collect a few walnuts before the squirrels get to them, they need to go through a period of cold temperature stratification. Basically, they need to go through a period of cold temperature for about 100 days or they won't germinate. The safest place to do this is in your refrigerator. Keep them slightly humid. In the Spring, take them out and plant them in pots.

They will still need to be protected against squirrels for at least the first year. Even after the nut germinates, if squirrels smell them, they will dig up the nut and take them. Even if the tree is four months old and 1 foot tall, squirrels will nip off the tree at the base and dig up the nut, killing the tree for the sake of that nut. Squirrels are pesky critters. One way I found to protect the trees from squirrels was to wrap the tree in a chicken wire teepee. The trees were in five gallons planter pots and each one got a cone of chicken wire wrapped around it.

That was the only way that worked for me.

After the first year, the chicken wire can come off the following Spring.
I think, by this time, the smell of the nut has disappeared and the squirrels ignore the young trees.


Regarding trying to clone the tree by taking cuttings, I don't think it can be done.
If you can successfully do it, that would be wonderful. Post back and let us know.
But if you want a clone of that tree, a better option would be to graft scions from that tree onto rootstock of another Persian Walnut tree, or a Black Walnut tree.

It's definitely possible to grow walnuts from cuttings, it's just not that easy compared to many other plants and allegedly they grow much weaker roots compared to those grown from seed. In commercial orchards they usually graft specific walnut varieties on rootstocks grown from seed of a particular variety that has good properties when grown from seed, but from what I've heard cloning particular rootstocks with cuttings also takes place in some areas. I guess if you prune the tree in a certain way you can keep it on the smaller end and it would still do fine if not put into too much of an exposed location.

You don't actually have to stratify walnuts it seems, if you just soak them for 24-48 hours and gently crack the shell around the pointy end where the germ is they will quickly grow into trees within just a few weeks of planting. I did it just like in this video I will link down below and have so far had 100% success rate when it came to germination, growing roots etc indoors. Sadly several of the very few nuts of a particular local, extra hardy tree that I had were destroyed by millipedes and fungus gnat larvae in the soil before I realized what was going on. If you keep them outdoors in the shell over winter that will help to protect them while they germinate and they will come up as seedlings in the spring ready to grow for the entire season, natural predators in the soil will also help keeping insect pests away I guess. But if you plant them outdoors you need to seriously protect them against squirrels, mice, other rodents and birds because they love digging walnuts up and other nut seeds to eat them otherwise!

Check this video out to see a very easy and simple way of making walnuts germinate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nPNd269q1I
I did just like in the video but took my nuts out after 11-12 days to gently crack them open in the pointy end and saw that they had all already germinated, I probably didn't even need the fridge step. I got seedlings in less than a month from the moment I picked fresh seeds up from the ground. It definitely works. As for cracking the nut shell without destroying the inner nut/seed/germ I recommend gently tapping the pointy end with a hand sledge or hammer until you crack the pointy end open, do not use excessive force and just let the weight of the hammer/hand sledge crack it open for you, that will definitely not harm the inner seed. There's no need to pry off the shell of the entire inner seed, there's a high risk of destroying the entire seed and splitting it in the half if you do that. I think a light soil-less medium like perlite, sand etc might a good idea for letting the walnuts sprout in peace free of any insect pests or mold and damp off. There is so much energy and nutrients already stored inside the nut seed that it won't need nutrients from the soil for some time while it grows into a seedling that you can transplant later when it's ready.

Definitely looks like English Walnut.  The leaves on Black Walnut and Butternut are more pointed like a spear.  If you plan to move and take trees with you, plant them in a deep pot to allow for growth of the central tap root.  Also consider timing, if moving in the fall.  Collect the nuts and store them in a slightly damp peat moss inside a larger Ziplok type bag.  Keep them in the fridge on lower shelf so they are cold.  Locate the large (3 gal.) pots you need and fill with a starter soil.  ProMix is good.  Check every 3-4 weeks and let fresh air into the bag.   You are basically replicating a natural cold period for the nuts.  By March you should see signs of the tap root emerging.  Carefully remove and plant the nut in the pot you have prepared.  As mentioned in other posts, protect with wire mesh to keep squirrels out for a least the first year.  I have had squirrels chew thought the sides of pots to get to the nuts, so consider taking the wire mesh down to the base of the pot.