How to germinate walnuts for planting?

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Walnut has long ceased to be something outlandish in central Russia. To date, many breeding varieties have been bred, adapted to both frost and drought. Every gardener can grow a beautiful and strong tree in his backyard that gives good yields of he althy fruits. In this case, it is not necessary to buy ready-made seedlings, but you can plant a nut with seeds. When choosing the second method, you need to know how to germinate walnuts, how and when to plant them, and how to care for them. All this will be discussed further.

Selection of planting material

Well, let's start answering the question "how to germinate a walnut?". A successful result depends primarily on the choice of seeds for planting. The main criteria to focus on are:

• The size of the nuts (you should take the largest possible fruit).
• Size and taste of the kernel (nuts should be tasty, andkernels - completely fill the shell).
• Shell thickness (choose thin-shelled fruit).
• Maturity and quality of nuts (fruits must be fully ripe, without any damage such as blackening, congenital deformities, etc.).
• Seed age (nuts for planting should be taken fresh, harvest of the current year, since last year's and the year before last's fruits lose up to 50% of their germination).

Another important nuance in the topic of how to germinate a walnut at home is the method of acquiring seeds. It should be noted right away that it is highly undesirable to do this in stores, since there is no guarantee that they will be fresh. In general, finding quality planting material is not so easy, but you can try your luck in vegetable tents.

Ideally, before sprouting walnuts, take them directly from the tree when they are already ripe. But do not pick up fruits that have had time to lie on the ground for a long time.

With the right choice of seed, you are guaranteed to get full-fledged, high-quality and he althy seedlings.

Preparatory work

Sowing seeds is carried out in autumn or spring. Germination of seeds should begin 1-1.5 months before the planned date of planting in the ground. Before germinating a walnut for planting, it is necessary to carry out certain preparatory measures. Selected nutskept in a manganese solution for three days. After that, they are placed for the same time in some kind of plant growth stimulator, for example "Zircon".

In the process of soaking nuts, the liquid must be changed daily, completely draining the old one. The fact is that a large concentration of tannins and essential substances formed from the shell can adversely affect how successfully and how quickly the walnut will be able to germinate.

Planting seeds

After weekly water procedures, planting material must be planted in a container. Before germinating walnuts, it is necessary to prepare the soil, consisting of sawdust and sand. To eliminate bacteria, sand should be calcined, and sawdust should be steamed. The resulting mixture is poured into a container to the thickness of the palm and moistened. On the resulting sand-sawdust cushion, nuts are laid “on edge”. A layer of moistened soil of the same thickness is poured on top.

The container should be placed in a warm place, but not near heaters. To preserve moisture in the soil, the container is covered with a film.

Seed germination

After 2-3 weeks after sowing, the top layer of soil is carefully removed without touching the nuts to check their germination. If the shell flaps open and a small white root appears, then the seeds have sprouted. For further cultivation, the container is moved to a sunny window, where the cultivation of seedlings continues until they are transplanted into open ground.

It should be noted that the timingseed germination is not always predictable. Fresh and high-quality planting material can sprout in 10-12 days, and for seeds bought in a store, it sometimes takes from 1 to 6 months. The rate of germination depends on the time of collection of seeds and on storage conditions, and these indicators are often simply unknown.

For example, a seed that has fallen in autumn and ripened naturally without additional stimulation by growth preparations, sprouts in open ground only in May. Artificially planted nuts germinate in containers in the second week.

Storage of planting material

If the autumn planting of the nut is not planned, you can save the seeds until spring. To do this, they are buried in a container with moistened sand and left for winter storage in a dark and cool place, such as a cellar or basement.

About a month before the May planting, the nuts are transferred to a soil mixture prepared for germination, consisting of thermally treated sand and sawdust and watered with a growth stimulator. The container is taken out to a bright and warm place.

Winter storage of nuts in sand prevents the kernels from drying out, cracking the shell, mold and parasites. When stored in plastic bags, all this cannot be avoided.

Sprouted seedlings can be transplanted into open ground already in May or grown in a container until autumn and planted in October. If the seedlings are grown in closed ground for a long time, it is necessary to transplant them twice a season inlarge-diameter containers.

Seedlings grown in spring must be hardened off before planting in the ground. To do this, they are taken out into the street every day for several hours. Gradually, the time spent on the street should be increased, reaching full daylight hours.

Conclusion

If you know how to germinate walnuts, follow the rules for further cultivation, feed and take care of seedlings in a timely manner, then planted in May in open ground, they grow up to 15 cm by September, and their roots increase in length up to 35 see. The first harvest from seed-planted nuts can be obtained as early as 4-5 years after planting.

Growing walnuts from seeds has one valuable property, namely, seedlings often outperform the mother tree in all quality indicators.