what nut varieties for cool wet climates

Fruitylicious1 says...
Hi Gabriellebr2

With chesnuts if you are after an easy to peel excellent roasting variety with superb sweet flavor, DeCoppi Marone is one of the best. Another outstanding chesnut variety is Purton's Pride, an all rounder performer; easy to peel, can be boiled roasted or steamed. While Red Spanish and Buffalo Queen is best boiled or steamed rather than roasted. Your area is suitable for planting chesnut because of the good drainage and have a good amount of rainfall not to mention the cool weather which chesnut trees adore. Plant a few different varieties to improve fruit set.

With Pecans, its a bit tricky. First you have to get the right variety for your area. It has a shorter growing season than the traditional growing areas where it has a long hot and humid summer and mild winters. So you have to get the northern varieties for your area.

Pollination is another tricky part with pecan - it is dioecious meaning it produces both male and female flowers at the same time but, the X and Y flowers will open at different times avoiding in-breeding. For example when your main variety's female flower become receptive you have to have a different cultivar nearby which shed its pollen (male flower) at approximately the same time as the main cultivar's flower (female) becomes receptive to effect a successful pollination. To better understand pecan pollination better go through the pecan pollination chart in detail which is available in the web.

With walnut you don't have to worry about complex pollination system like the pecan. Most of the cultivars are self fertile. So far the best variety is chandler. A grafted chandler variety can purportedly produce nuts as early as in its 3rd year. Another excellent walnut variety is the French cv Franquette and of course the old favorite the English Walnut

The only problem with walnut is its toxicity with the chemical it emits from its roots, bark and leaves called juglone where it can decimate plants and grass nearby sometimes up to 20 meters most especially the black walnut. Be very careful with the location of this one. It might one day end up annihilating most of your vegetation.

Happy gardening :-)