Plant Black Walnuts

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Saplings may be sold with the roots pruned back to 12 inches . . . or the main tap may be uncut and thus a lot longer. The length of the root will tell you how deep to dig your hole. Use either an auger or a posthole digger for the chore, and set your seedlings in deep enough to assure that the root collar is below the ground. Finally, fill in the hole slowly . . . packing the soil a few inches at a time.

SPACING YOUR TREES

Each of your "young'uns" will need 100 to 150 square feet of growing room. This means you can plant on 10' X 10' or 12' X 12' grids. Even though a random stand may simulate nature, it can result in fierce crown competition (which is capable of slowing growth by 50%) and make proper thinning difficult. Also, if you're planning to disk or till to keep down weeds, planting in rows will make the task a whole lot easier.

Should you plan to monocrop black walnuts, you'll want to plant on the small grid system. However, you should at least consider intercropping. When doubling up the hardwoods with another crop, it's best to plant seedlings — so you won't have to worry about germination — on a 35' X 35' or 40' X 40' grid. Then, once the trees are a few years old, you can sow orchard grass, bluegrass, hay, fescue, or red clover between the rows. Cattle can even be grazed right in your woodlot, once the trees become too large to be browsed or trampled.

COMPETITION CONTROL

For the first three years of your trees' lives, they ought to have the soil all to themselves. Even when intercropped, the hay or grass must be controlled in a three- or four-foot circle around each young tree.

If you don't want to use chemical weed controls, you can continue to rototill periodically throughout the three growing seasons, but such a program does involve a lot of labor. Black plastic mulch is probably the best all-around nontoxic solution. Cut each piece about three feet square, and make a small slit in the center for your seedling and a few small holes to let rainwater (but not the sun) in. (If you planted nuts, simply put the plastic down as soon as shoots appear.)

PRUNING AND THINNING

Your major concern, in the early life of your trees, is that they grow straight and don't fork. So pack up some tape and a pair of sharp pruning shears, and set out to examine your one-year-olds sometime between May and July when it's clear what direction the new growth is taking. If the terminal shoot (the one on top that's supposed to point straight up) is at an angle, prune it back. A new shoot will then begin at the first bud behind this cut, and that growth ought to shoot straight up. In a few years the slight crook produced by this method of surgery will disappear naturally.

If the tree is forking, tie the bases of the two branches together with tape or cloth, and then prune the tip of the weaker shoot back to the point at which it's tied to the stronger fork.

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