Pecans?

[Wilma]

Since pecans don't come down good until after a freeze, I doubt if the harvest has started yet.  Daughter just looked and there aren't very many under the tree at the edge of my yard.  The hulls are still green.  It is the middle of October and we haven't had any freezing weather yet.  It's quite a sight the day after a freeze, watching the pecans fall.  The trees can be bare by the end of the day.

[Tobina+1]

OK, very interesting... so now I have even more questions... I thought they shook the pecan trees to make the nuts fall into the bins?  Do you still have to wait for a freeze for them to be ready to do that?  See... I guess I just need the "experience"!   

[Wilma]

Now, that I don't know.  I have heard of them shaking the trees and I think there is a machine that picks them up.  I would enjoy seeing how it works.  I know that some of the groves southeast of here used to keep the grass around the trees very short to make the picking up easier.  Haven't been down that way for a very, very long time.  Maybe someone should see what they can find out about pecan harvesting.

[Wilma]

So I went to see what I could find and I found very little about the harvest.  What I had forgotten is that the wait for the freeze is so that the freeze can pop the husks open, releasing the nuts so they can fall.  The green husks are quite difficult to remove and so are the dry husks.  Sometimes it is necessary to shake a tree to get the nuts to fall.  The husk opens out into 4 petals like a flower blooming.  If they don't open far enough to release the nut, then shaking the tree shakes the nuts out.

We had pecan trees in our back yard for 20 years without much of a harvest and now I find that the trees have to be about 20 years old before they produce good.  The one at the edge of my yard isn't producing heavy yet and the squirrels and crows and blue jays get most of them.