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Inside the World’s Largest Walnut Forest
- tomcam 9y agoWalnut is a dense and surpassingly beautiful hardwood. Makes great electric guitar bodies.
- Boothroid 9y agoGot a couple of reclaimed pieces waiting until inspiration strikes. Can confirm: beautiful wood.
- netman21 9y agoNote these are not black walnut trees as found in the US. Of course walnut wood is beautiful too.
- mudil 9y agoWalnuts were one of the first foods certified by the American Heart Association as being heart healthy. Walnuts are especially high in omega-3 fatty acids.
- HillaryBriss 9y ago> For former ranger Tarikov, the preservation of the ancient forest is the key. “If I had a million dollars, I would make a wall around the forest with checkpoints, great rangers with good salaries, and really encourage the wildlife to return,” he said. they really get value for their money there. in Los Angeles a million dollars would not cover the pension for a single retired police officer.
- colinbartlett 9y agoThanks for posting this, that whole site is new to me and it's pretty incredible.
- joshdance 9y agoSame thought for me. Very cool site.
- mkl 9y agoI was thinking that the lack of undergrowth below the trees must be artificial, but then on the Wikipedia page about walnuts I saw: "[The trees] secrete chemicals into the soil to prevent competing vegetation from growing."
- jackmott 9y agoso you weren't wrong really!
- megaman22 9y agoWalnuts are hell on other plant life. I have a couple black walnut trees on the edge of my lawn, and I have had to experiment a bunch to see what vegetables I can actually get to grow in my garden...
- craftyguy 9y agoDid you find any that would grow in that environment?
- megaman22 9y agoMost greens (spinach, kale, swiss chard, beets) seem to do pretty ok. Green and pole beans do quite well. Broccoli did alright, at least the plants, though I had a pack of baby rabbits that savaged it when it was small, and it never headed up after that. Very mediocre results with my tomatoes and cucumbers this year, but it was very, very dry. Oh, and zucchini. But you can almost plant zucchini on asphalt and it would find a way to produce bushels of the stuff...
- dejv 9y agoYou really need to take care of fallen leaves as they are the main way of walnut to combat a competition. Once you rake the leaves every year you should be quite fine growing most of the vegetables that didn't require a lot of sun.
- dom0 9y agoI can't confirm that, there's plenty of plants around the regia tree in my garden. It has had fungus since forever (like every walnut tree I've ever seen), so that might keep it from doing that.
- mrfusion 9y agoSomeone should do a study on the health effects of the people living there. Curious if the walnuts give them super health.
- mrfusion 9y agoI’ve already been downvoted into the bowels of the underworld but here’s a citation to support my claim: In 2016, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provided a Qualified Health Claim allowing products containing walnuts to state: "Supportive but not conclusive research shows that eating 1.5 ounces per day of walnuts, as part of a low saturated fat and low cholesterol diet and not resulting in increased caloric intake, may reduce the risk of coronary heart disease." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walnut https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walnut
- craftyguy 9y agoWhat makes you think they would get "super health"?
- rdtsc 9y agoI know someone who grows and sells walnuts. They have their own trees, then hire seasonal workers to crack them and extract the meat, package them and sell in bulk to Western Europe. A truck full of shelled and packaged walnuts can be worth $100k+. But those prices have been going down in recently. Also if you get a chance, try green walnuts. They ones that are still in their green soft outer hulls. Have no idea where you'd find them in US. But they are pretty delicious - a completely different taste than the dried ones, I think somewhat similar to avocado. The juice from the green outer hulls will also stain anything they touch, including hands. Takes a few days to get it out, but given the taste, it's worth it.
- dejv 9y agoTotally, walnuts are great cash crop. It doesn't need basically any work during the year and you get huge stock out of every single tree. Also the market for shelled walnuts is big and even I (the world worst salesman) can sell full stock in few weeks. There are two cons: shelling is really work intensive and it takes decades for trees to mature enough to give good yields.
- dom0 9y ago> and you get huge stock out of every single tree except of course those afflicted with fungi, which causes them to basically bear no fruit at all and spreads through the soil.
- dejv 9y agoThat must be location dependent. In my area there are no fungi problem with walnuts and I get consistent crop every, biggest problem is spring frost.
- j_s 9y agoShipments of almonds, walnuts, and pistachios are being stolen in California | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14487166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14487166 (Jun 2017, 58 comments)
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