racist primitives discuss only black walnuts

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/11594047

Oh my.

noamnety (18,667 posts)   Thu Aug 8, 2013, 01:01 PM

black walnut help please

We have a couple walnut trees that came with our house. I assumed they were black walnuts. They were too young to have nuts when we moved in, and this is my first year trying to harvest them.
 
I tried storing a few (a dozen or so) inside in a basket to ripen a bit because they felt pretty hard. Those promptly turned black and molded. So I thought I'd try gathering fresh ones and smashing them open. That went okay, but I got to see the inside of a couple that I smashed too hard, and inside the hard shell, the nut is squishy soft even though it doesn't seem to have signs of rot. Also, the shell inside the husk is surprisingly white - like eggshell white. So are they not black walnuts?
 
Am I doing this wrong? Should I keep smashing husks off, and store the nuts-in-the-shell for a month or so to harden?

.....first up.....the primitive with the sensitive bottom!!!

Curmudgeoness (11,086 posts)    Thu Aug 8, 2013, 06:32 PM

2. I don't remember how we got the nuts out

when I was a child, but I do remember it was so messy. Black walnuts will turn you and everything else black when they are cleaned, so wear gloves. Also, you clean them when they are black or getting black, so they were not rotten. That is how they got the name, I suppose. I do know that at some point, my parents and grandparents decided that they were not worth all the trouble to clean (and they were super frugal depression era folks). Maybe there is a better way than they used.
 
I don't know why your nuts are soft, but they should not be. Maybe they were not ready to harvest???

noamnety (18,667 posts)    Thu Aug 8, 2013, 06:41 PM

3. Thanks.

That's where I was hoping for someone with some experience, because some websites say to let them sit in the husks til the husks get soft, others say to cut them out right away.
 
I have read not to pull them off the tree because you can damage the tree, so these were all ones picked from the ground, they just started dropping last week.
 
I wore gloves that were knit, but with the palms and fingers dipped in the thick rubbery goop. Somehow that shit got inside and indeed, several of my fingers are very dark brown now. Very elegant looking.

[ChuckJ]

I guess DU is as good a place as any to get info on nuts.

[DLR Pyro]

why do they hate brown walnuts so much?

[Wineslob]

*digs the hole even deeper for the bar*

 

[Bad Dog]

Curmudgeoness..."I don't know why your nuts are soft, but they should not be."  Amen to that brother..sister...whatever.

[DefiantSix]

Try the roots, DUmbass. That's where the mind altering goodness is stored in the black walnut tree.

 

[GOBUCKS]

Walnuts are a bitch. The only reasonable way to prepare them is to buy a 16 oz. bag at the grocery store.

I can't imagine why anyone would go through the chore of getting them out of the husk, and then out of the shell.

When I was a kid we'd boil them with new steel traps to give the traps a dark color before weathering took over.

[JohnnyReb]

Let them fall off the tree, pick them up, throw them in dirt/gravel driveway, run over them with cars/trucks until only the nut is left nice and clean, gather and crack.

They're cheap and easy to gather at the grocery store.

[RobJohnson]

Curmudgeoness..."I don't know why your nuts are soft, but they should not be."  Amen to that brother..sister...whatever.