Our Nutty Weekend

A few weeks ago I showed a handful of pecan kernels under the smart-alec caption Ha-Ha Harvest... now I must eat my words - and they are delicious! This is the best pecan year in 3 decades according to Austin, Texas newspaper articles. I don't know who planted ours, but pecan trees may not have been the best choice for a quarter-acre lot. They grow too large and drop something in every season... husks, leaves, pollen flowers, limbs and tent caterpillar debris. The trees were already here when we came, giving shade and once in a long while - bestowing a harvest.

Some of you live where pecans grow so you may have seen the green husks emerging in spring near the long yellowish pollen flowers. Maybe you've also watched the nuts develop as the husks swell all summer long. We had no experience with pecan trees until we saw husks form during our three summers at this house.
If you're a Texan or a Southerner you probably knew what the nuts should look like at harvest time - we had no clue. No edible nuts made it to harvest time here in 2004... or 2005... or 2006. We'd been in a period of drought so the husks were taken unripe by squirrels and only the 'empties' were left behind to fall off - no wonder the online articles didn't tell us how to get the nuts out of those thick green husks - Nature is supposed to do it! This year we finally saw how things are supposed to happen: the husks gradually open and dry up, with the points curling back, revealing the beautiful tawny nut inside. Instead of waiting for them to drop, we got on ladders and took any that looked close to ready before the squirrels got them. They were still hard to open and there were many empties or bad kernels. A post by Susan Albert clued us in that the nuts needed to be dried first. That made a big difference.We had to crack a lot of nuts to get good kernels but when the wonderful Divas of the Dirt showed up on Saturday the table had this arrangement of Texas-grown sunflowers from Whole Foods, and we had nut bread for breakfast - made with our own pecans.
[Thank you, Entangled for making that suggestion in a comment! ]

As a member of the Divas I get one turn a year to be hostess, serving breakfast and lunch to my friends. It's fun to cook for them, and we need fuel to work on whatever garden project the hostess has set up. My last turn was in February of 2006 when the Divas helped me transplant three spiraeas to start the bat-shaped bed. They also moved some large container plants from weather shattered clay pots to unbreakable containers. That day we had off/on rain and barely got to 50º.
This time the weather was sunny with a high of 90º. I asked my friends to get rid of some more lawn grass and enlarge the 28-foot long border along the fence where the Acoma crepe myrtles grow. The bed was too narrow, the edge was uneven and it had become shadier since the crepe myrtles finally 'took'. Adding a foot-and-a-half along the front edge would make space to move sun plants languishing in shadow.

I won't tell the whole story of what happened on Saturday - that only happens once a year at the end of January on the Diva website - but here's how the long border looked today, after wind, rain and an overnight drop in temperature.

Something else dropped last night - the wind blew down the pecans from the top of the tree where our ladders couldn't reach. We picked up all that we could find, washed them and they're drying on racks in the garage.I hope the proportion of good nuts is high enough for more nut bread - or maybe a traditional Thanksgiving pecan pie.
Some other Austin gardeners have pecan trees, too - and have not had much of a harvest in previous years. Maybe MSS from Zanthan Gardens and Lee from The Grackle were lucky in 2007, too - is anyone else out there enjoying this bumper crop?

Edited October 24: The percentage of good nuts is pretty high - and my scientist husband notes that it's taking about 100 of them to make one pound of shelled pecans. Susan Albert sent a link to LSU's Ag Center with advice on how to store pecans. Thank you, Susan!