How do you harvest black walnuts?
Do you have a few walnut trees and are not sure what to do with the nuts? Here are the basic instructions for harvesting your crop of walnuts. Walnuts are great plain or in walnut cake, even Cook Black Walnut Meat, or other recipes, many of which don’t require many walnuts. Follow these steps to harvest your walnuts and prepare them for eating. • Wear gloves or your fingers will look like this! Collect the nuts that have fallen. Some walnut trees are very tall so picking them off the branches is out of the question. Plus, picking them can sometimes damage the tree limbs, so just wait for them to fall and gather them up. Be sure to wear heavy duty rubber gloves as the cheap disposables will not work. • Getting the green hull off, this bunch was run over with the car. Get the green hull off of the walnut. As black walnuts ripen, the husk changes from solid green to yellowish green. Walnut juice leaves a dark stain, so wear gloves or use tongs when you handle unhusked walnuts. Press on th
• Wear gloves or your fingers will look like this! Collect the nuts that have fallen. Some walnut trees are very tall so picking them off the branches is out of the question. Plus, picking them can sometimes damage the tree limbs, so just wait for them to fall and gather them up. Be sure to wear heavy duty rubber gloves as the cheap disposables will not work. • Getting the green hull off, this bunch was run over with the car. Get the green hull off of the walnut. As black walnuts ripen, the husk changes from solid green to yellowish green. Walnut juice leaves a dark stain, so wear gloves or use tongs when you handle unhusked walnuts. Press on the skin of the walnut with your thumb; ripe nuts will show an indentation. Removal can be done by just taking a small jack knife and cutting around the hull and peeling off, or you can lay them on the driveway and run over them with your car! It often is just as easy to roll them under your foot until the hull is cracked open, pick them up and pe
