Will Supermarket Nuts Germinate

Its in a nearby wildlife park

 

If the brazil nut is in danger of extinction, I suspect the real reason would be more likely due to logging, or forest destruction for the purpose of growing soya beans to feed cattle, or palms for the oil for eco friendly plastics and biofuel.

 

Can you actually buy Brazil nuts anymore?
I've not seen any for a couple of years other than processed.

Is there not some poison in the shell, from which we are being protected

 

Guys there is an articles about , sometime is nice to know thing like this....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2003/dec/19/science.environment

 

But they could plant seeds and grow them in plantations if they wanted to.
Its just a matter of wanting to.

 

Good article Sal. The Brazil nut only grows in the wild , it has never been cultivated . Is this correct ?

 

You tell me, I'm guessing it would not be a commercial enough crop, long time between planting and cropping, there are things that would pay on a much faster basis

 

Not sure again , but apparently the plants need about 60/80 years and 50 mt before start producing fruit , the plants live beetween 500 to 1000 years , that why no one is bodered of growing new plants .....all around the world we are eating those nuts from the same tree years after years .....no new tree .

 

Popped into Tesco today and they've now got some loose mixed nuts in so I picked out some almonds, pecans and some chestnuts (my normal wild supply isn't looking this year)...went to pay and the lady couldn't find a code for them so put them through as something else and charged me 16p for about 30 nuts.....bargain!!, nothing to loose

 

Bilbo , will you wait till spring or try now?

 

Hi Sal, in the case of the Sweet Chestnuts, they'll be going straight in pots and popped in the cold frame.

I've googled the others and there seems to be two lines of thought for the Pecans, either do what I will do with the Chestnuts above or put them through a period of 'dry' stratisfication (essentially just keep them in a bag for 3 months) in the fridge until the spring, soak for 24hrs and then sow them in pots. Apparently in their native habitat they have probelms with pecans popping up all over the place from autumn fall and nuts buried by squirrels; similar to our oaks and hazel I suppose..

For the Almonds there wasn't really a mention of stratisfication, just soak for 24-48 hours, then carefully crack the outer shell a little and then sow them and keep them on a warm windowsill...