hi everybody welcome back to Stark Brothers we are in our pecan Scion orchard today and we were
just walking around out here and noticed that the pecans are really getting fully ripe and they're
ready to harvest and some of them are falling on the ground so I thought we would grab Terry stark
who's one of our growers here at Stark brothers to give us the whole scoop on pecans she's gonna
talk to us about what you might expect if you're growing a pecan and once you have big beautiful
trees like these how to harvest them so Terry thanks for coming out today welcome awesome
so what do you have here so this is actually a Pawnee pecan which is a very good seller it's a
very big nice it has a nice big nut to it so when you're gonna get your tree you're gonna get you
can either get it depending on the time of the year you're gonna get it with leaves on it or it
will be dormant and that would mean all of this growth would be off and it's still gonna be when
you get it in this spring or in the fall and it's due foliated it will come out nice in the spring
but it's an easy easy start I'm gonna pull it out of the pot here and as you can see it's it's full
of roots and you're forming a lot more hair roots and you don't have that long tap root to have to
contend with digging a real deep hole or cutting part of it off this you don't have to all you have
to do is score the roots around the pot break up the root a little bit so it acclimates into its
surroundings and it will take off now if you had a bare root tree and you are planting it you would
have to go and prune it back at least a third of the way this one you get a potted tree like this
there's no pruning to it when you're when you're planting it so when I get it at home I take it
out I score the roots lightly with some with a knife and then I don't have to worry about any
kind of pruning at all in the ground it goes yep and and I can eventually expect to get something
75 to 100 feet tall like these awesome so when I'm considering growing pecans one of the things that
I need to think about in terms of my zone do they need multiple pollinators what give me kind of a
scoop on choosing pecans okay so know your zone of course if you know there's southern varieties of
northern varieties they're more geared through seven seven to nine zone or five to six zones
stark in southern giant which this is is zoned for zone six so as you can see they're doing very
well no your space limitations they get seventy five foot tall so space requirements are forty to
seventy foot apart so if you're doing planting a variety you need a type one and a type two so the
type one in the type two pecan trees have opposite flowering processes and the opposite flowering
process allows you to get even more pecans than what you could just from a single tree and I also
learned to that they're wind pollinated so they're wind pollinated instead of by your typical bee
pollination so it's a little less to worry about there but if you get two different types when we
and we make it really clear on our website what's a type one what's a type two and what
are great pollinators for each other so once you figure out your space and how many you have room
for you can go and pick from the pollinators that will best suit your your climate in your condition
okay so when you're planning this tree don't fertilize it for at least 30 days and then you
can fertilize it with a nitrogen rich fertilizer don't fertilize after July because you don't want
that fresh growth going into the winter months also once they start bearing in that bearing
stage then you want to start putting some zinc sulfate into the incorporating that too that'll
keep the tree nice and healthy and green and it will ensure that you're getting a good meat into
year your in your nut and as they're establishing I read that you should water a pecan about once a
week that they're they definitely require a lot of water to get established right they need a
lot of water to get established and also they're pretty heat tolerant they like that long growing
season like those long nice summer months but if it's going into a really drought period you
need to water them because that helps ensure that you're getting a filled nut other if you
keep it if it's too dry and it goes through long drought then it's not gonna fill that nut so Terry
will one question before they get to the point where they're actually harvesting how long does
it take all of our customers want to know I asked hypothyroid customer service manager what is the
most common question you get about pecans and she said how long till they harvest so tell us what's
the number it can be anywhere depending on the variety between three to nine years so be patient
but it's well worth the wait and when they get to the age like this they're just producing tons and
tons of a nuts and then then you're glad you made that initial environment so Terry when do you know
when it's time to harvest your pecans okay so pecans can you can harvest them anywhere from
September to November kind of depends on where you are and the zone and the variety if they're
starting drop on the ground of course that's a sure sign and if as you can see it's starting
to open up the hole is opening up and you can see that nice pecan inside there that one you
can go and pick right now there's all kinds of nutcrackers out on the market yeah I do believe
that we have one off in our catalog I was doing this earlier and they were laughing at me how
do you crack it Terry when you're hungry and you really want to akan use your teeth that's right
okay there's a little bit white yeah just I don't think it's quite got the card okay can we see of
mine yeah let's see if yours is right I just won it's got a little bit more time to go so there are
a lot of work but they're well worth it because they're delicious mm-hmm and there's you know a
wide wide use for them in any recipe they're very health healthy for you mhm you know you
just can't go wrong with a good pecan certainly not do you have a favorite pecan variety Pawnee
and cons are very good yeah yeah so hopefully you learned a little bit of something I always learned
something whenever I have a chance to spend time with Terry so Terry thank you for being with us
and order your pecan trees you're definitely gonna watch some of my youth I see this in a
turtle right now look at that he's a turtle candy mmm a beautiful delicious thanks so much to them