black walnut

I've recently moved to a new home and we have a HUGE black walnut tree in the backyard behind the garage. I've heard that they will kill many plants. Does anybody know what plants will grow well under a black walnut. thanks, Sharon

This might be a help-
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/218640

Thank you ... Thank you... Thank you! I remember a reference to this thread in the fall, but now that I needed it, I couldn't find it. I just printed out the entire thread and it will go in my permanent personal plant file! I appreciate your help. You are truly a wealth of information!!!!

If its huge its a money tree. They pay high doller for them.

They normally don't pay that much if it's a tree in a yard. Lots of nails and crap in them when they mill them and nobody wants to pay higher work comp rates. At least that's what I've been told but I could be having a brain fart. That happens to me a lot these days.

Say tea teateacher, those are plants I am incorporating into the landscape here. Hint... don't plant a Fringe Tree anywhere near a Black Walnut. Been there done that!

Some folks want a Black Walnut, and some of us want them at the neighbors. When I bought this place there were walnuts growing, and they are a nice tree for large areas away from human activity. So far as plants near it go, just because everybody agrees that you can plant a hosta near them, and they won't be killed by the juglone (the toxin), that doesn't mean that a walnut won't do like every other large tree and suck every bit of water it can. Planting other plants near a walnut is hard mostly because they make the area under the drip line dry as any desert. That said, there are many plants that I have found to be greatly affected by the toxin. Cheif among them are the conifers. I saw one list posted that included Abies as a group of plants tolerant of walnut poison.

I will gladly accept anybody coming here and planting a spruce, fir or pine where walnuts have been shed for years. Three spruces (Norway, 2 P. pungens) a fir (A. balsamea), a White Pine and a Larix decidua tell me they just won't grow there. In all fairness, the Larix has lasted almost 10 years, but it is growing at a fraction of the rate of a twin planted in a less hospitable soil but away from the walnut. Malus (apples) species also languish near a walnut. Cherries don't mind at all, and that native rampant vine Campsis radicans can grow up the tree if you water it for the first couple of years. A Persimmon I had planted where a walnut stump had been (old photos showed where the stump had been, nothing remained) died to the ground every year. After 3 years of that, I moved it 25ft farther away from where the stump had been and it grew like it was supposed to.

Another reason for not planting a bed around the trunk of a walnut, the bombs that fall in Oct. Imagine dropping heavy tennis balls on the plants below, that is what the poor dwellers under a Black Walnut experience in the fall.

You have a valid point there about sucking water and tennis balls bombs dropping but I gotta tell you I love the look of the temperate species ferns growing around the base of the walnuts. I love the bark from walnuts too. So much texture and depth to it.

Many people dont know it but pecans and other hickories also produce juglone, although not nearly as much. I had some blueberry bushes planted within the root zone of a large pecan tree and they never did grow that well. I dug them up and moved them away from the pecans and close to some pines and now they are thriving. I have noticed the same thing with azaleas. Where pecan trees only stunted the growth, walnuts probably would have killed them.

I had my large walnut cut down this year. It was a very old, well-formed beauty, but I have never regretted cutting it down. Walnuts are terrible gardening partners, although I think the juglone issue is a bit over-rated. I successfully grew many plants beneath it for years without problems, even azaleas which show up on every "can't be planted with walnuts" list.

A few plants I mysteriously lost near the walnut: Ilex verticilata, Itea virginica.

Regarding the moisture issue, I found that my walnut at least never caused much problem, certainly nothing like a maple anyway. My walnut was always very late to leaf out, and by August half the leaves were already lost, by September it was naked, so it was only drawing moisture for a relatively short part of the season anyway. Roots are reasonably deep.

In fact, my arguments against walnuts stem from this short season of foliage, and falling crap--flowers, leaves, nuts, and rachis, over the full season. Just a continual maintenance hog.

Somewhere on the back forty, great tree. In the suburban yard, get rid of it. As for the value of the wood. Good luck. Urban trees have always got some metal in them, which stains the wood and ruins expensive milling equipment. No one will pay serious money for a yard walnut...at least that was my experience.

Scott

This is a great forum. Thank you all for participating. I have learned more from you than from all the books I've read combined on the Black Walnut. Why would there be metal in the tree? Am I missing something here? Would it be from nails that hung plants or something?

Hardware to install hamocs, bullets and BBs from guns, nails (lots of nails), railroad spikes, assorted bolts and screws, cables, coat hangers that were used for who knows what that were left behind entwined, staples (think "For Sale" signs), metal pegs and lashings, and I'm sure I missed quite a few. I can also tell you that people toss things like hot wheels and matchbox cars up into cavities of trees so those have been found in too. Incredibly, people fill up those cavities with concrete some times which is another material that you don't want to find inside a tree if you are cutting it, really destroys a chainsaw. Who knows what all everyone has found in trees. I have heard of people who use metal detectors to try to determine what is where.

That is really interesting. I would predict that my tree is metal free at this point because the development was carved from a very wooded area along a river bank/cliff and I can't imagine why anybody would've put metal in it, but who knows. This part of N. Georgia has a lot of hunters and it could have a few stray bullets from years past. The tree is actually behind a separate garage and in an area of our yard we don't drive or even walk on very often but is very visible to 5 houses/neighbors who come up a small road next to our garage so I'd like for it to look nice. The base of the tree actually is on a sloping area and my main concern was that I didn't want to mow under it, thus the hosta & ground cover. From what I'm reading,(thanks again Equilibrium for the info) it sounds like I will be able to put ferns under it it too. I ordered several varieties of hosta yesterday (both large & small) from eflowergarden.com after I read of their excellent reputation here on DG.

TT, If those hunters were after the wiley horned rodent we've all come to hate, it is my experience that every 3 weeks from emergence you hit each of those hostas with a generous libation of liquid fence and then around brown up time just stand back and say the hell with it cause I believe they would physically push you aside if you were standing on the plant 24 hours each day. Don't seem to bother my ferns in the same bed. There is a fern called Bracken up here that if someone tries to sell you, shoot him immeadiately. I can't believe someone would but that's what they said about purple loosestrife. Ken

Thanks for the info. Maybe I need to oil up my gun for the rodent!I'm a pretty good shot!

"Maybe I need to oil up my gun for the rodent! I'm a pretty good shot!"
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PLEASE come up here! But that gun of yours better be a machine gun.

By the way, I think there is a lot to be said for black walnut. Don't be too distracted from its virtues by its rebelious character.

Guy S.

You're right. I hadn't thought of the damage to equipment. I was thinking of somebody with a nail stuck in their forehead. I know that is a horrible thought but millworkers have died because of nails from yard trees.

Over here in the US, Work Comp is insurance employers are required to purchase for their employees who get injured on the job. What you just desribed above is what I was referring to when I commented about workmans compensation insurance above. Employers who have a frequency of claims pay considerably higher rates than employers who don't. Additionally, it is my understanding that discounting is available to employers who are claims free. Given rates for WC insurance can be all over the board, a rate of .23¢ per hundred is not unheard of so add a 10% surcharge to that for a claim and there definitely is incentive in the rating for employers to look out for what is best for their employees.

EQ:

Another very common bit of metal found in tree trunks: barbed wire or any other metal farm fencing component.

Some other fun things I've seen in Metro Parks' trees here in Louisville: metal T-posts, chain link fencing, hubcaps, washers (that you'd put over a metal bolt), and all the various components of bracing/cabling trees. We even have one cannon, with a wheel grown over and through by a Robinia pseudoacacia, out at Sun Valley Park.

I could go on, but you get the point.

A hubcap? I've found bricks and always wondered how they tossed those up into a cavity without the brick coming down and beaning them in the head but hubcaps are big and are sort of like frisbees. How do you control tossing that up and into a cavity? Practice must make perfect I suppose.

I've seen barbed wire wrapped around trees. People use trees as posts.

Do you have a photo of the canon?

When the National Champion American hackberry (Celtis occidentalis) in Mason County Illinois was split apart by a storm a few years ago, I took this photo of the center of its 21-foot trunk at eye level.

Go figure!

Guy S.

What is that? I tried zooming in and I still can't see what that is.

Hammerhead!

(No, the photo -- not you!)

Guy S.

I've "lost" a lot of vise grips in my life. makes you wonder. now I spray all my tools attention pink or blaze orange.

Hammerhead, now I see it as a hammerhead.

I keep meaning to spray paint my tools. I have the best intentions of going with a color that is neon and then I never get around to it. Best guess is I have hundreds of dollars of pruners and such laying around here that will end up becoming part of the landscape if I don't locate them sooner or later.

I once found a tree with an electric cord coming out of it. It still had the two-pronged plug on the loose end. I was tempted to run an extension cord out to it and plug it in and see if I could hear an appliance of some type come to life from inside the tree, but I got distracted and never did.

Scott

EQ: don't have a digishot of the cannon (only a slide, not with a Canon but with a old Pentax :-D) but I'll get one next excuse I have to get out to that park.

Hey Incumbent! Dittoes on the electrical appurtenances. Iroquois Park in Louisville has historically been the site of WinterFest, which is a series of lit-up displays. Unfortunately, the Metro Parks "Forestry" division supplied power to all of this by NAILING cords, lines, insulators, etc. to every species of tree within arms reach (including Quercus alba, Quercus prinus, and Quercus marilandica (ouch), which are now proud owners of journeymen electrician licenses.