I don’t personally own any Walnut trees, but many nearby property owners include them in landscaping. I’m not sure what kind of Walnut they are. Whatever the species, they all seem to be quite similar in the springtime. I rarely get to see any actual nut harvest, as they will be quickly plucked away by either property owners , raccoons or by grey squirrels.
Hubby gathers ours up, cracks and freezes the nutmeats. I can eat the butternuts, but I don’t like the black walnuts. I prefer the English walnuts.
They are most likely a hybrid English walnut.
Black walnuts have a much thicker and harder husk than the English variety.
I don’t think even San Franciscans are loopy enough to plant black walnuts along streets.
Those black walnuts could easily dent a car when they fall.
We have Black walnut all over the place around here.
We had ten or twelve on the farm. Most were 50-60 feet tall.
When the nuts fall from the tree they are covered by a thick green husk.
We would throw them on the driveway and run over them for weeks.
The husk would turn black and start to dry.
Once most of the husk had been removed we would gather them up and spread them in a sunny spot to dry a little..
Once they had dried a bit we would start cracking them.
Unlike the English walnut the black walnut has a very hard shell.
It required a hammer, an anvil and much sweat to crack black walnuts.
You could always tell when someone was husking walnuts because their fingers would look like they had been staining furniture without gloves.
Took a week or so to wash the stain off.
We would take a couple of gallons to town and sell them by the cup.
Some years those walnuts paid for Christmas.