Growing Walnut Trees
The Difinitive Guide
7 Steps To Growing Walnuts
Whether you plan on running a large commercial orchard or just want to plant a few trees in your country home, there are a number of issues to consider when you decide to begin growing walnut trees. This guide covers the entire process of growing walnut trees — from the selection of adequate farmland to begin your orchard all the way to the sale of your walnuts after harvest.
Getting Started With Walnuts
This guide assumes you already know the basics about English Walnuts (juglans regia). If you’re just getting started, make sure to check out some of our articles to get a handle on the basics of walnut trees.
1. Preplant Decisions
When you’re deciding where to grow walnuts, the first step is deciding on a location. Your search for a location can be divided into two key steps: (1) climate and (2) soil.
Northern or Southern Hemisphere For Growing Walnuts?
Your first decision is a key one. In today’s global marketplace, it makes no sense to restrict your search for walnut farmland within your own country’s borders. By expanding your search to new horizons (and southern latitudes) you will find there are important advantages. The northern hemisphere produces 93% of worldwide walnuts, all harvested between late September and early November.
Northern producers are forced to invest in expensive cold storage to sell their walnuts in the off season, while southern hemisphere producers are harvesting fresh walnuts from March to May, making them the freshest walnuts available for 6 months until the northern harvest.
The laws of supply and demand take over from here, as southern producers are paid substantially more for their off-season harvest. Learn more in our in-depth analysis of why we recommend Growing Walnuts in the Southern Hemisphere in general and why we believe Mendoza, Argentina is the single best location for growing walnut trees. We also have guides on specific locales for walnut growing, with our take on each:
- Mendoza, Argentina
- California, United States
- New South Wales, Australia
- Anatolia, Turkey
- Yunnan, China
- Vinnytsia, Ukraine
- Santiago, Chile
Walnut Climate Requirements
On a macro level, you need to find a climate that can provide 1000 hours of cold temperatures (45 °F or 7 °C) per year. If the tree receives less than 1000 hours per year, you risk a delay in bud formation and the resulting reduced fruit (i.e. nut) production.
However, sub-freezing temperatures are NOT desired. Walnut trees are susceptible to night frosts, especially when recently planted. There are strategies to manage night frosts, but the best is to avoid them entirely. Read our article on walnut tree climate requirements for more information.
Walnut Soil Requirements
On a micro level, once you’ve identified a walnut tree growing region by climate, its time to move on and identify different tracts of land as candidates to plant your orchard. You’ll need to take soil samples and identify a site with a neutral PH level, low sodium levels, and loose soils where the walnut tree root system can penetrate without obstructions. There are a number of issues to keep in mind, that’s why we’ve prepared an article on walnut soil requirements to get into the details.
Commercial Considerations For Walnut Orchard Site Selection
After finding a site with favorable climate and soil characteristics for growing walnut trees, you need to take into account how you plan on selling your harvest from this location. Are you near a walnut processing facility? Do you plan on building your own facility to peel the husks and dry your harvest? Will you be sizing and grading your walnut production? Will you be shelling your walnuts or selling them in-shell?
Depending on your location and the size of your orchard it may or may not be a good investment to add some or all of these value-added industrial processes. You should know what your buyers expect ahead of time and the prices paid in your local market.
If you plan on adding some or all of these industrial processes to your operation you will need to plan ahead of time how much space you will need for your on-site industrial processes. Read more about walnut processing to see how it fits into the walnut tree growing process.
2. Growing Walnut Trees: Preparing to Plant
Our system eliminates the uncertainty in planting new acreage and is perfect for investors looking to make their first investment in agricultural land.
