There are only a few nut trees that grow in our area, and some of those aren’t the best.
We had a half-rotten black walnut tree that made lots of nuts but no one in the family liked them. We’ve planted a few more black walnuts just because they’re cool, but it’s very hard to harvest the nutmeats even if we did like them.
We’ve also planted hazelnuts which are growing well; however, they really aren’t known to grow great here, so we only have limited hope on that front.
It’s way too cold here for cashew, monkeypot and Brazil nuts, and probably too cold for macadamia as well.
Some hickories do well and have tasty nuts, though they are rather hard to process. My kids have smacked them open with hammers on a concrete patio and picked out the meat, but it’s some serious work. If we find a source for types with larger nuts that grow here, we’ll add them to the property.
Pecans do quite well here, except when they get knocked down by hurricanes. We’ve planted a half-dozen more to add to the ancient seedling pecans we got with the property. It takes a long time to get nuts but they are worth the wait.
Almond trees would probably grow here, but the Southern humidity is known to wreck the harvests. They’re also plagued with pests and disease. The humidity is also a problem with pistachios, and it’s probably too cold for them anyhow.
Ginko makes good nuts, but it’s sure hard to find fruiting ones since people hate the female trees because of the fruit’s rancid odor. They also take decades to fruit.
Which leaves us with the nut that has done best here for us, and which produces in record time.
The chestnut!
We’ve planted about eight chestnuts since 2022 and we’re getting our first little harvests this year.
We planted mostly Chinese and Dunstan chestnuts. Both have been easy-to-grow and precocious, bering in the third year from planting.
In this photo, you can see the nuts compared:
And you’ll see more in the video I just posted to YouTube.
The American chestnut tree used to dominate the forests of the Eastern United States before the introduction of the chestnut blight that destroyed almost every single tree. Though we haven’t found a good American chestnut that will survive here yet, if one is discovered, we’ll plant as many as we can.
For now, the Dunstan (which has some American genes) and the Chinese chestnut do great, even if they are tiny trees compared to the towering American chestnuts of the past.
Chestnuts don’t need perfect soil and thrive in zones 5-9, and can probably be zone-pushed into zone 4 as well with a decent microclimate.
We have some in the food forest and some in the Grocery Row Garden, as well as one tree that stands alone in the front yard. It’s hard to beat them!
And finally, the nuts are good to eat boiled, but we haven’t had luck roasting them. They came out sappy and unpleasant.
Boiled, they taste rather like white sweet potatoes with some extra nuttiness.