This early dry weather caused the nuts that year to be very small, especially on trees growing under less favorable conditions. Trees that were well cultivated produced nearer normal sized nuts.
About the middle of August rains began, and these nuts were well filled. The rains of August brought new life into the trees causing them to hold their foliage unusually late, and not being thoroughly dormant before cold weather, at which time no doubt many of the fruit buds were killed, with the result that a very light crop of nuts was set in Spring of 1945.
Spring opened very early with a bright warm March starting growth before usual time, even some trees set Pistillate bloom by the first of April; then later in April it began raining, and rains continued most of the Summer with much cool, cloudy weather with the result that most of the nuts failed to properly fill, or mature. This was true of hickory nuts, walnuts and pecans of both the named varieties and native seedlings.
While the 1945 nut crop was very light of both pecans and walnuts, I had a few trees with fair crops, though none of the nuts had well filled plump kernels.
Some of the first nuts to ripen seemed to have fairly well filled kernels after gathering and kernels got dried out, they shriveled and lacked flavor.
Walnuts seemed to suffer even worse than the pecans. I was not able to find a walnut tree in this section that produced good planting nuts; even farm crops suffered, especially corn of which much of the crop was not of normal quality.
The spring of 1946 began very much as in 1945 with a very warm March, again causing trees to start growth unusually early, and this spring, pistillate bloom was visible on some pecan trees in the last days of March. This weather condition remained until about the middle of April when cool rainy weather set in lasting for a month with frosts and light freezes as late as May 10th, which took all the nut crop in this section with the exception of a very few walnuts, and these were of very poor quality.
Another very peculiar thing happened in Spring of 1946. The Posey and Giles varieties, both of which are usually heavy bloomers of Stamen bloom, failed to set a single catkin this spring, while trees of other varieties growing near them set heavy crops of catkin bloom.
The behavior of nut trees in this section in the past two years, both of which have been unusual seasons, is evidence that nut crops are subject to weather conditions, not only of the present, but of previous season as well.
Nut Tree Notes from Southwestern Ohio