Had an old timer tell me yesterday the black walnut trees near my pond need to go. They will eventually cause a fish kill when they get large from the fruit. He also said they will kill my tomato plants in garden too. Have you guys ever heard of this? Said they used to harvest ponds by throwing potato sacks of hulls in pond and fish would float to top.

Yes the Juglon or whatever it is in the hulls are toxic to fish...Somewhere in my early post here on PB I asked this question and quite a few links got posted...

Here is one of the links...

http://primitiveways.com/fish_poison.html

It was in this thread...

http://forums.pondboss.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=25555&Number=326118#Post326118

The hulls are pretty toxic but I don't know that you necessarily have to cut down the trees.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juglone

There are lots of articles about this if you search. Seems like it could be true if in high enough doses. I am sure there are quite a few loggers around who would love to take them off your hands.

Thanks guys. The tress are not producing walnuts yet and are over 50 feet away. A couple are around 30 foot tall. I have planted a few in the watershed that are only 3 foot tall. Really like walnut trees. Hate to cut any down. Guess if I ever need to make a fish kill this will be a natural option. Now to break it to my cousin why his new garden under a mature walnut is looking like crap. His tomatoes and peppers keep wilting and dying at random times one by one.

You should think twice about cutting down black walnut trees. Some folks will pay BIG BUCKS for Black Walnut if it's true Black Walnut!!! Those 30 foot trees could be worth a whole bunch a money once they hit 50 foot. I'm talking 1,000's of dollars per tree! To the right buyer /sawmill

RC

Thinking I will take my chances. Ill clean up walnuts every year and sell them. To me a giant tree in my yard is priceless. Actually had to make pond smaller to save 100+ year old white oak. I love having that thing next to pond. It is on upper side end so I think I'll be ok as far as root doing to much damage to dam. They are true black walnuts. I have them all over my property. I sell the walnuts on good years.

If you can find a buyer for unhulled walnuts please let me know. Those things are a royal PITA to husk.

Affirmative on planting a garden under Black walnuts.....that's a no-no.

This...

I have a buyer 8 miles away. They have a machine that strips hauls off and packs in onion sacks. Pretty cool. Not much to it. Usually make $40 a s-10 bed full heaping. Did not have enough to sell last year because of drought. The guy is paying for his daughters college with the money he is making from profits.

We hull them by putting them in the driveway. Driving over them will break the husk off, but not damage the shell. Just don't do it where runoff from that area can drain into the pond. As mentioned above, the husks are deadly to fish.

The driveway is our method of choice also. Although an old, hand-crank corn sheller will do a passable job.

I have a very large Black Walnut tree about 30' from my 2 acre pond. Last year I did not collect them and maybe a hundred + ended up in the pond. I never had any floaters so don't think it had any effect at all on the fish.
I've only had the property since last September and it has a couple dozen large BW trees. I plan collecting the nuts this fall. I was not looking forward to hulling them but the driveway method might simplify that. Never know what you'll learn on this site.

Make sure you wear gloves or your hands will be brown for a couple weeks.

Yeah, black walnut trees near a pond ain't good. They mess with the pond and you need em gone. I've read on this website walnut trees that walnut trees spread poison to the pond and kill the fish inside it when they're near it. Chop em and sell em.

Walnuts are reputed to be good for health, particularly brain health. I eat them daily, though, which may disprove the brain part.

An old lady told me to soak walnut shells and leaves and pour the water on the ground and the worms would come right up due to the toxicity of the brew. Have never tried it but if it affects the little wiggly creatures I suppose it would also do the same for the ones that swim. Hulda Clark the lady naturalist Dr. said to take a tincture of a few drops of black walnut tincture in a glass of water and would expel worms. Sounds like it must be a potent substance.

I can attest to the driveway method for husking the nuts, but if you intend to try to harvest the meat, I can also tell you it's a LOT OF WORK!! Black walnut is more like hickory nut, very hard shell (that's why you can drive over them) and not a lot of meat inside. Nothing like an English walnut.

I avoid the work of collecting and shelling by processing Black Walnuts through squirrels.

Maybe a good marketing campaign will work for walnuts that have passed thru squirrels the way it did for coffee beans that have passed thru civets???

And how does black walnut fed squirrel taste?

Like chicken of course:)

Having black walnut near (literally touching) our pond hasn't caused any appreciable damage to the fish or pond. This pond has been there for 30 years and there are 5 or 6 black walnut trees within 10 feet of the shore and walnuts do fall into the water. We've always had good fishing.

They do cause some problems near a garden but it's debatable on whether that is due to any poison produced or simple water uptake from a large tree. We had one next to the garden and everything near it was slow to grow but the tree was also very large. We cut it for lumber finally since it was worth quite a bit. It's better to harvest them than let a storm bring it down.

I can back up wmfamily's above statement by saying my pond also has black walnuts close-by and up hill from the water. Nuts fall into the pond and the water has actually been tee colored presumably from watershed from the walnut and shagbark hickory groves. My fish have only been in the pond for about a year and no signs of poisoning (prior to refurbishing the `50 year old pond sustained GSF and crawdads with out issues).

I have read rather convincing articles about the black walnuts ability to act as a poison, but wm's and my situations must be below the threshold.

My two cents