Pecans in Arkansas - Old orchard, inheriting, where to start, halp!

Hi! New here. Excited to be.

So, after WWOOFing on other people’s farms with my husband for 7ish years, we found out he inherited a sizable bit of land in Arkansas. Preeeeettty stellar finding, totally blessed, obviously. But! Our farming adventures were all in the Midwest.

Neither of us know anything about Arkansas. Or, really, to be honest, permaculture. I mean, we have dabbled in permaculture (like, I’ve read some books, and we’ve visited a place that kinda did it), but that’s it. No working knowledge, very little experience. Hence … halp me.

One of the two plots he got has a very old pecan orchard on it. The pecans still fall, but there has been no one there in decades to gather them. There is someone who is paid to mow around them, and he does that, and that’s it.

We are thinking to revamp it, collect the pecans etc, but have NO KNOW HOW OF THIS AT ALL. I’ve eaten pecans. Candied, mostly. My dad makes pecan pie. There’s the extent of my knowledge of pecans. We have of course seen gorgeous images and YouTube videos of food forests, and have a friend who does permaculture design, so that’s where our minds are at, but where the hell do I start?

What do these trees need? What kind of equipment is needed, both to process the pecans, and to revamp the orchard? What plants would help with this, that could also be used for other things? Are those the right questions? There’s so little I know, I’m not even sure what to ask.

And so … halp! D:

Nora Oaks wrote:Hi! New here. Excited to be.



We are thinking to revamp it, collect the pecans etc, but have NO KNOW HOW OF THIS AT ALL. I’ve eaten pecans. Candied, mostly. My dad makes pecan pie. There’s the extent of my knowledge of pecans. We have of course seen gorgeous images and YouTube videos of food forests, and have a friend who does permaculture design, so that’s where our minds are at, but where the hell do I start?

What do these trees need? What kind of equipment is needed, both to process the pecans, and to revamp the orchard? What plants would help with this, that could also be used for other things? Are those the right questions? There’s so little I know, I’m not even sure what to ask.

And so … halp! D:

The trees need good soil and healthly microbial life.  Grow the stuff below ground and the they will provide what your trees need.  Commercially Pecans need zinc solution sprayed on the leaves 2 to 3 times a year for production and insecticide if you have bag worms.  

I would look at putting pigs on the ground under the trees in a rotational grazing pattern.  Let them cleat up old pecans (high protien) and disturb the soil slightly.  There are youtube videos by several permaculture farmers on this.  

The commercial way to harvest pecans is to mow the field bare and 'sweep' the nuts into windrows and then sweep/vaccum into a truck.  Think in more natural ways.  Can you catch the nuts on tarps and keep off the ground (sanitation) to harvest?  Can you let them feed a livestock crop (pigs) and not be gathered at all?  

Learn all you can about sol health and management in a permaculture way.  Get livestock on the soil.  Don't use chemicals or fertilizers (they are are petroleum based.)  Learn about using compost tea as a foliar spray to keep your trees healthy.  

Good luck, congrats! and welcome.  

If this were a property that I bought or inherited and I wanted to collect pecans for enjoyment or profit it seems all the old pecan and debris under the trees would need to be cleaned up first. Otherwise what is collected would take a lot of work to shift through.

nora said, "We are thinking to revamp it, collect the pecans etc, but have NO KNOW HOW OF THIS AT ALL

This thread will give you an idea of some information that will be helpful:

https://permies.com/t/173470/Pecan-Canopy

Please ask any question that you might have.

Here in Oklahoma there have been from time to time some half-day classes on Pecan orchard management, run by cooperative extension agencies or by a non-profit ag-education out fit we have here.  In your shoes I would look for something similar in AR.  

It's my impression that managing a pecan orchard for maximum economic yield requires massive equipment -- tall boom-truck spraying rigs, tree shakers, specialized raking machines to pick up the nuts.  But the urge to do that may be driven by people who have massive farm mortgages to service.  We have people in Oklahoma who do nothing more than mow under the trees, and then run around with a little rolling-rake attachment behind their ATV that scoops the nuts up into twenty gallon bins.  So I would say, don't panic.  

One important thing to keep in mind is that pecans aren't a reliable annual crop.  The wild ones are uneven-bearing, producing small crops, or none, for 3-6 years in a row, depending on weather, before producing one massive crop designed to overwhelm the ability of squirrels to eat them all.  The commercial types you'll probably find in an orchard (if it's not just a grove of wild trees that has been thinned and tended forever; you'll probably be able to tell because tended wild trees would not be in rows or evenly spaced) are *less* uneven, but very few varieties produce a steady crop every year.  At best they will have small crops one year and bigger crops in another.  A lot of the fertilizing and irrigation strategies are aimed at reducing the unevenness, but how well it works varies from year to year. Mature trees don't need irrigation to survive but a lack of water when the nuts are filling can hugely reduce the crop.

That about exhausts what I know about pecans.  Good luck exploring your new orchard!

A lot of good comments above. We live in a pecan producing area and have a few trees ourselves.
You do need to get zing down to get good production.  i suppose your local pecan farmer or co. extension could tell you how much based on tree size.
We"re in a very wet area and the deep roots of pecan trees like that. They use a lot of water.
as far as the work involved,  clean up around the base of trees before they start falling as harvesting for us involves rolling around wire baskets that grab them up.
We then much back under trees with fallen leaved until the next year.
They sell just like that for around 20.00 a gallon sized brown bag here.  That's just local roadside stand selling. (they go very fast before the holidays come around).
Processing could make better money but a bigger investment in stuff.
Good luck.

Noble Research Institute in Oklahoma has a pecan orchard and has done lots of research for commercial growers. 200+ articles.
Noble Research Institute search pecans