Twenty-five years ago, I planted my first group of Black Walnut seedlings, making sure to keep them 12 to 15 feet apart. Per directions from the NYSDEC, I surrounded each seedling with four Russian Autumn Olive seedling. Each subsequent year, I planted 25 more, each time surrounding them with Autumn Olive. The Autumn Olive was a great protector of the walnuts, as it had hard thorns about an inch long. When it went into bloom, the fragrance was intoxicating. Hummingbirds are a bit of a rare treat for us in the North Country, but one time I heard a lot of buzzing and counted eight of them happily going from flower to flower. The little fruits were actually edible, and I considered making a jelly from them, despite the little meat around the pits.The only drawback was that I had to trim the Olive to keep it from shading out the walnut. The next year, I went to buy more seedlings, but was surprised there was no Autumn Olive to plant with them. I asked why and was told that DEC had determined they were an invasive species. I was a bit stunned. When I got home, I found that there were indeed now Olive plants all around the perimeter of our 7 acre field. In addition to the 600 I had planted, there were at least a hundred more that the birds had planted after eating the drupes and getting rid of the stones at the first convenient perch. Working diligently, it took me two years to eliminate the larger bushes. Unfortunately, it is impossible to completely extract the roots, as some always break off, rather than allowing themselves to be pulled. It seemed like each such root is fully capable of starting a new bush the next year, so, every year since, I have had to spend a couple of days pulling the small Autumn Olives before they reach seed bearing age. Fortunately, the Walnuts have helped. They now are large enough that they cast a pretty dense shade and it is more than the Olive can tolerate. As a result, my primary patrolling is around the perimeter of the field where the roots keep sending up new shoots each year. I planted the Walnuts in the hope that someone would eventually be able to harvest them for lumber. Towards that end, once they were around four years old, I began trimming some of there side branches so they would have a single, nice straight bole. That was actually a lot of work. I really worried about how I would be able to get up to the branches that were forming above 12 feet. It turns out that the 12 to 15 foot spacing is now coming into play. The trees create enough shade that the lower branches die and fall off, so the trees are trimming themselves and developing nice tall trunks. The ones I planted first are now about 11 inches in diameter, so they should be ready for someone to harvest in another 25 years.
Posted on: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 20:44:56 +0000