Nuts and, walnuts in particular, have a certain vernacular around them, green, wet, dry, kernel. How do they all fit together in the annual life cycle of the tree? Let’s take a look and what makes a walnut a walnut.
First to emerge from the spring sunshine are the green walnuts. These vibrant little globules are walnuts when they’re half formed, they’re little balls of tannic possibility, nuts before their hard outer shell is formed. They’re ripe for pickling, and are often used in Italy to produce nocino, a rich, dark Italian liquor.
Walnuts are typically one of the last trees to leaf in Spring, not until mid-May do some of the elegant French varieties put out their first leaf. By which point, the grasses are already waist high, and it can often be an odd sight to see a bare tree surrounded by luscious meadow. But soon they get a move on, sending forth new shoots any which way possible, with new growth followed very shortly by flowering.
This is the riskiest period for the future walnut crop, where a late spring frost can reek havoc. We were fortunate by barely a degree this May, when one night the cold snap nearly claimed the crop for its own. Once this hurdle is passed, with a few weeks of warm sunny weather, the walnuts can soon put on a spurt to be ready for picking green by late June.
The test is to put a pin through them, if there’s no resistance, then the plump green balls are picked and ready to go. At the orchard, this year we combined this with a light summer prune to remove the internal branches. Walnuts, unusually for most fruit and nut trees, benefit more from a summer pruning rather than winter.
Those remaining are left then, for the remainder of the summer, the trees work their magic turning sunshine and rain into the delicious kernels, whilst we help them on their way looking out for blight and build up in the understorey. Then comes late September and the arrival of the first crop and, the elusive wet walnuts.
Wet walnuts are walnuts which are fresh off the tree with a distinctive milky lighter taste and texture. They’re available and good to eat only for a few days, as, unlike many other nuts, walnuts have a porous shell and are highly susceptible to moulding if not dried and stored correctly. Get them at their best between 25th September and 15th October, more or less!
Past this point, it’s all about drying to the right level as quickly as possible, to make sure the kernels remain as light and tannin free as possible. Then by the October, the dried walnut in-shell and kernel are fresh and ready to eat.