Growing Nuts for Food and Profit

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Nut trees.
Nut trees.
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Cracked walnut.
Cracked walnut.
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A variety of nuts to grow for food and profit.
A variety of nuts to grow for food and profit.
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Nut tree.
Nut tree.
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Chart for spacing nut trees in orchard.
Chart for spacing nut trees in orchard.
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8-foot deer fence with electric fence, outer perimeter.
8-foot deer fence with electric fence, outer perimeter.
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Trunk climbing deterrent and flashing sheet to discourage squirrels.
Trunk climbing deterrent and flashing sheet to discourage squirrels.

Learn about growing nuts for food and profit.

Selecting, planting, tending and harvesting the perfect homestead crop.

What if we told you that you could grow a supernutritious, easily stored food crop for home use, as an emergency food supply, or as a lucrative cash crop right from your half-acre vacant side lot or rocky meadow? You can do it without too much preharvest work other than routine pest control, pruning, mowing, letting a few chickens loose on the land to eat weevils and turning on an irrigation hose now and then. Growing nuts for food and profit takes hard work. Interested?

Few new-to-the-country people have the foresight, patience, tree-crop know-how and marketing savvy to grow and market nuts successfully, but the effort is worth it. Familiar species such as walnuts, chestnuts and pecans, or exotics like heart nut and pine nut, shelled and sold to the local co-op, farmer’s market or roadside produce stand can fetch you $250 to $1,000 per tree each year. Bake the kernels into nutbread, muffins or oatmeal cookies, or cook up some nut fudge, and you have what many homesteaders dearly yearn for: a unique product that provides a reliable source of cash. If you have the energy, space, time and equipment, you can earn a great deal more. We’ve seen harvests of 30 bushels of in-husk nuts from one mature black walnut tree. The dehusked, dried, cracked and shelled, picked, winnowed and bagged nutmeats went for $8 or $10 a pound.

The husks and bark of walnuts and their relatives can be pressed, steeped or cooked to produce rich staining oils and rare earth-toned dyes. They are salable in quantity or can be used in small, home-brewed lots to stain your woodworking projects or to make natural dyes for wool. Walnut oil pressed from husks is also a prized finishing product for fine furniture. Naturally dyed fabrics, knitting wools and garments sell for high enough prices to make home production of finished cloth or raw products more than financially worthwhile.

  • Published on Dec 1, 2000
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