Posts by Drew Mitchell76

Sean Fox60 said:Sure, you can plan on mowing with a mower, but remember that walnut trees need high-quality soil to really thrive!
It’s way faster for me to just run a disc harrow through to kill off the weeds, which helps lock in the moisture and lets me till in some manure or synthetic fertilizer! I leave the grass alone until it's time to harvest the walnuts so the ground doesn't turn into a muddy mess, then I just zip through it with a string trimmer real quick! Just yesterday, I finished tilling about two acres of orchard! On the hilly parts, I don't bother plowing at all—I just mow, and we've always left the grass standing near the trees to keep the mice from making a nest.

You can easily make compost by setting up a few piles right there in the orchard!

At the end of the day, Agriculture is a business when you look at the production costs!
You really have to approach it with that mindset and adapt your whole operation accordingly!

I appreciate the advice, truly, but a few years back we tried nothing but heavy harrowing, and we ended up with a massive headache trying to get the ground level again for mowing.

The soil itself is excellent, so we aren't struggling there... 🙂

The real issue is our lack of heavy machinery; investing in it just isn't cost-effective or practical for us right now. We even gave the sickle bar mower a shot, but then we ran into issues with the grass buildup. So, for the time being, our best bet is a standard mower that shreds the grass—it saves us from having to collect it later, and it basically acts as a natural fertilizer.

We cultivate, lime, and fertilize the walnuts every single year in December, so by the time the snow starts melting in the spring, those minerals have already worked their way deep down toward the root systems.

As for the leaf litter, composting is really our only viable option—burning isn't an option since we're short on space, and tilling is off the table for the reasons I mentioned earlier.

I wanted to upload a photo to show you, but the system won't let me—there's a 27MB total limit and a 9.8KB limit per file. Though, honestly, I don't think I've ever successfully posted a photo on this forum before? That's strange...

But regardless, thanks so much for the tips and the feedback!

Henry Edwards33 said:You might find it worth checking out the Agriculture subforum.
We've got threads covering everything from walnuts to hazelnuts and more.

Thanks for the tip! :-)

I noticed there’s already an active thread about walnuts over there—fingers crossed I can pick up some useful advice while I'm browsing.

Sean Fox60 said:I usually do some shallow tilling in my orchards during the fall, including the walnuts! During the summer, I run a disc harrow through them a few times, let the grass grow out after mowing so things aren't a muddy mess during harvest, and then once the leaves finally drop, I just go in for a light till. I'm actually heading out tomorrow to plow part of my plum grove; I already finished one section, and I'll get to the walnuts a bit later!
Generally speaking, if you can till your orchards, you really should! If you leave them as just grass, you don't get any moisture retention or good organic buildup over the winter!

As for plowing, that’s just not an option for us. Our setup is designed specifically for mowing with standard lawnmowers, so we prefer immediate mulching—it just works better for our workflow. We don't bother collecting the grass because, frankly, we have no use for it.

If we started plowing, we’d be forced to level out the entire field again just so we could mow it properly, and that’s just extra work we don't need.

For the time being, we can still move the fallen leaves over to another field to plow under, which suits us perfectly. We were actually thinking that down the road, compost might be our only real option...

wiredjackal40 said:Just pile 'em up and burn 'em.

That’s actually what we’ve been doing—only instead of burning everything, we’ve just been tilling it all into my uncle’s field right next to our plot. The only real catch is how much longer he'll let us use his land before he tells us to get lost.

We don't even have the space to do any controlled burns, and honestly, with this autumn weather, everything is so soaked with rain that starting a fire would be a total nightmare...

I’ve got about 50 walnut trees planted on my property, along with a few hazelnut bushes that mostly just serve our own kitchen needs.

The walnuts went into the ground back in '95, and honestly, I’m pretty happy with how they’ve turned out. They aren't some fancy, specific cultivar—just a solid, homegrown variety I picked up from a local nursery—but they produce these large, pale nuts. Back then, you didn't have nearly as many options to choose from as you do today. We stay on top of them, though—liming, weeding, and fertilizing regularly—plus we keep the grass mowed around the trees all summer long with the mower. Because of that extra care, they've grown surprisingly fast for their age, especially since walnuts can be such slow starters. Right now, the yield isn't massive—maybe around 50 pounds once you shell them—but we’re hopeful those numbers will climb in a few years.

It’s a bummer... I really wanted to post two photos, but I can't get them to upload because the allowed file size
is absolutely ridiculous; whenever I try to shrink the images down, they become completely invisible...

I was hoping to ask some of the fellow members here—since I see quite a few of you have committed to growing walnuts—how you deal with the leaf situation. It’s becoming a real headache for us. Every autumn, we gather up all the leaves; usually, we just haul them over to my uncle’s farm to be plowed under, or we toss them into the compost pile. But as the volume keeps increasing, hauling them to my uncle’s field and managing the compost is becoming a massive chore. I’d love to hear how the rest of you handle this mess...