Some uses of English Walnuts
English Walnuts to be used for making pickles, catsup, oil and other culinary products, are gathered when the fruit is about half mature or when the shell is soft enough to yield to the influence of cooking. The proper stage can be determined by piercing the nut with a needle, a certain degree of hardness being desired. The nut is often utilized for olive oil in some parts of Europe. It takes one hundred pounds of nuts to make eighteen pounds of oil.
In England the nuts are preserved fresh for the table where they are served with wine. They are buried deep in dry soil or sand so as not to be reached by frost, the sun's rays or rain; or by placing them in dry cellars and covering with straw. Others seal them up in tin cans filled with sand.
Examples of Hardiness
As an illustration of the hardiness of the English Walnut, there is a tree at Red Hill, Virginia, which was brought from Edinburgh, Scotland, when six months old, planted in New York, where it remained three years, then removed to Staunton, Virginia, and after two years taken to Red Hill. In consequence of so many changes, the tree at first died back, but is now thrifty—twenty feet high; trunk, eight inches in diameter at the ground.
During several severe Winters, the thermometer fell so low that some peach trees and grape vines growing near English Walnuts on the Pomeroy farm near Lockport, N.Y. were killed, while the nut trees were not in the least injured.
