2011 was the worst weather I’ve ever seen for my hobby orchard.  The highlights were.

1.   Unusually cool spring.
2. Late spring freeze ruined 2011 crop on pretty much everything.
3. It went from a cool spring to a very hot summer with no transition. This was the hottest summer I’ve ever seen.
4. No appreciable rain from May Through September.  This is the worst drought I’ve ever seen.

The year started out with an unusually cold winter.  We even had 3 snows.  The kids used up all the allocated snow days and then some this year.  I decided

to plant some more fruit trees this year. I found some cherry trees that may actually produce in north Texas (Royal Lee and Minnie Royal) and planted 3 of

them.  We also planted a few more apple trees and some plum trees.  We even planted two Dusten chestnut trees.  One of the one year pecan trees failed to

live through last summer and I transplanted a small tree that was growing in a pot to fill in the “skip”.

I found some bare root grape vines on sale and planted about a dozen new vines around the hobby orchard.

I waited a couple of week later than normal to plant the spring vegetables as the soil temperature was still pretty cold the last week of March.  Even waiting until the 2nd week of April the soil was so cold it hurt your hands to move soil while putting in transplants.

Pretty much everything had leafed out by the first week of April except for a few of the pecan trees.  The third week of April we had a pretty good freeze (normal last frost is the last week of March in our area).  This ruined our chances of any fruit this year but also took out the blackberries, grapes, and much of the pecan production.

The Pecan trees that were not damaged by the freeze set a very heavy crop.  I made one release of trichogramma wasps to help control the pecan nut casebearer but since 9 out of 10 shoots had flowers on them I made the decision to let the casebearer thin the crop some.

But something stranged happened this year.  A weekly survey of the flowers showed a long and continuous infection of the developing nuts.  Infection and nut drop was severe and continued in to June and by then there was virtually no crop left.

In May the weather turned strange.  It suddenly went from highs in the 70′s and low 80′s to the mid and upper 90′s and all rain cease.  May, June, July, August, and September were mostly 10 to 15 degrees above normal for our area.  There were a lot of days well over 100 degrees.  The weather transition was so sudden and drastic that part of my garden wilted on that first hot day in May.  There was not much production in the garden once it turned hot and it required daily watering or the plants would wilt.  The okra and peppers partially wilted almost every day even with daily watering.  This was the worst year

for vegetable gardening I have ever seen.  We could keep plants alive but production was much lower than normal.  Prior to it turning hot production was good and the cool season plants did well.

Most of our pecan trees are not on an irrigation system.  Those trees not on an irrigation system that had a few nuts made pecans about 1/6th normal size but most of them dropped off in July and August in the heat.  The irrigated trees did okay but the high cost of water forced us to stop most of the watering in August.  By August several pecan trees started dying.  We ended up loosing most of the grape vines, all of the blackberries, and most of the trees planted over the winter. Two out of the three cherry trees and both chestnut trees did not make it.  The fruit trees were watered regularly so I blame the survival rate on the heat. The larger more established trees survived but looked pretty bad.  Most of the small pecan trees did not make it.  Out of 200 pecan trees we ended up losing about a dozen.

I put grafts on about 20 pecan trees in the spring with a good success rate.  But that was before the heat and drought took it’s toll.  It appears that grasshoppers prefer the leaves and bark of new grafts over all other parts of the tree by about 10 to 1.  Several of the growing grafts were defoliated and some debarked by grasshoppers.  I couldn’t get too upset by it.  I think even the grasshoppers were starving.   I did manage to get grafts to take on 3 trees that have not taken a graft for the last 3 years straight.

It was so hot and so dry that by August even the weeds were dead.  I looked out over my creek bottom orchard and the only thing green were the trees vines and shrubs.  All grass and weeds looked dead.  I haven’t mowed my lawn since July and never mowed the orchard at all this year.

Our pond started getting pretty low and then one day in August all the fish died.  We had a lot of nice catfish and bluegill in our upper pond. It smelled very bad for a few days.  By September both ponds had pretty much dried up.  We are using this event to clean them out.  I was very suprised to see how much silt was in the upper pond.  We stuck a pipe down and could easily push it in 4 1/2 feet toward the middle of the pond.

We are using this as an opportunity to clean out the ponds.  It is very slow going using a small tractor with a front end loader to scoop out the silt but some progress is being made.  Care has to be taken as the deepest parts of the pond are still wet and the tractor start sinking so we are mostly working on the sides and shallow parts of the pond were the ground is firm. Once I started working on this, you guessed it, it started raining again.  No run-off for 5 months and it rains after one day of working on the pond. We really needed the rain though. I managed to get a second day or pond work in by taking a day off from work.  Depending on how much rain we get that may be the end of the pond work for the drought.  We’ve had a couple of good rains in October.  The soil moisture is back up now and a heavy rain could fill the ponds now.

The weather continues to be wacky.  We had our first light frost in the middle of October (normal first frost is in November here).  Some of the vegetable garden plants were burned but most came through okay.  Another possible frost is forecast for Halloween weekend.  We plan on covering as much as possible.

With the recent rains and cooler weather the garden has really perked up with a lot of peppers and tomato fruit set.

Some good things have come out of the drought/heat of 2011.

1.   Several pecan pests populations were dramatically reduced.  I saw zero hickory shuckworm this year and zero Pecan weevils.
2. There was no powdery mildew or pecan scab in our area.
3.   Squirrel populations are down.
4. Not much mowing was needed.
5. The weaker trees were removed.  I noticed it was always the trees that were the smallest in thier age group that died or the trees in the worst soil.  I have a theory that some trees are runts and will never grow or produce well.  This gives me the oppertunity to replace these trees with something with better growth and production potential.

Lesson’s learned:

1. Pecan trees do not wilt when they go in to water stress.  Some of them may get some die back on the oldest growth from the bottom up and/or loose a lot of leaves.  Once you see wilting leaves on a pecan tree – it is pretty much a goner.
2. Don’t count on pests to thin only part of your crop.
3. It is not economically viable to water pecan trees during a drought using city water.  We really need a well.

We had a very heavy fruit set this year on most of the pecan trees with some having female flowers on 10 out of 10 shoots.  Most trees had at least 7 out of 10 clusters with female flowers.  This was way too many nuts for our young trees to be able to mature in to good quality pecans.  We made the decision to allow the pecan nut casebearer to thin the crop down to a more manageable size.

The pecan nut casebearer thinned our crop excessively.  By the time we got to June drop we were down to less than 1 out of 10 clusters having any nuts.  On some trees I was hard pressed to find a developing nut.  I’m not sure if it was the casebearer but at the end of April something attacked the leaves and most of the new growth looked pretty ragged.  Large pieces of the leaves were removed.   Growth prior to and after this looked normal.  A survey of other trees in our area showed the same pattern.

Rainfall was below normal for most of the spring and it was unusually hot.  There were some heavy rain events during the summer and many of the native trees lost what few nuts they had left to scab.

Now it is October and there are few if any nuts on my trees.  A survey of the local trees shows the same pattern.  Few if any trees have any significant nuts on them.  The few remaining nuts are smaller than normal.   The squirrels are making short work of any trees that have nuts.  I was able to quickly find two pecan trees at a local park that did produce a small crop by looking for squirrels.  Both trees were actively being worked by the rodents.  No other trees at that park had any significant crop on them.  I was unable to find any pecans at another park in a neighboring town that normally has a moderate to good crop.  The businesses that crack pecans for the locals may not have much work this year.

Webworms are normally considered a nuisance but most trees have had at least one large colony.  Some trees have 8 or 10 colonies and have significant damage.  I have been using a long piece of bambo to tear out the larger colonies that can be reached.  BT sprays have also been used but new colonies continue to appear.  A survey of the trees near Sherman and Denison shows the same pattern of webworm infestation and damage.

We have also started seeing some twig girdler damage.  Last year several of my young trees lost over 10 percent of their shoots due to these beetles that chew a small ring around the shoots and lay eggs in the cut.   The shoots then die and fall to the ground.  Last year I collected a large pile of these shoots and burned them.  Looks like I will be doing this again this year and it may end up being an annual event.

So far I have not seen any signs of pecan weevil this year.  No weevils in any of the harvested nuts and no nuts on the ground or in the trees with small holes in them.  I saw very few weevils last year but became concerned as my adjoining neighbor who also grows pecan trees reported a massive loss due to them.  The heavy crop loss this year might end up being a good thing if it prevents the pecan weevil from taking up residence in my orchard.

Now we are looking forward to next year.  Most of our trees are less than seven years old and we continue to learn.  One of the lessons learned this year is to try to preserve your crop as pests and disease can take your entire crop even in years of heavy fruit set.  Another lesson learned is variety selection.  I’m seeing a pattern in the creek bottom where Desirable, Pawnee, and Choctaw have been unable to produce a well filled nut – mostly due to scab but also due to powdery mildew and squirrels.  As you move higher up out of the creek bottom where there is better air circulation (and fewer squirrels), these varieties do much better.  We are strongly considering grafting all of these varieties in our creek bottom over to Caddo, Jenkins, or some other native variety that performs well in our area.  We are also going to be forced to do something about the squirrels.

Eric bringing fertilizer down to the orchard.

Our pecan orchard is located in north Texas about an hour north of Dallas.

From all appearances, the trees are just sitting there.  This past weekend we had some temperatures in the upper 20’s and about 3 inches of snow.  It has been a relatively cold and wet winter here.  It has snowed 5 or 6 times along with enough rain to saturate the soil.

Below ground I’m pretty sure the roots are becoming active.  There is some minor bud swell on the trees but bud break does not appear to be imminent. The cool season grasses are growing rapidly.  I think orchards look the best for the next few weeks.  There is short green grass and the entire orchard looks like a park.

Graftwood was collected back near Christmas.  I had a hard time finding good graft wood this season.  My trees are getting a little older now and growth has slowed down a little(most of my trees are 5 years old now).  There were a lot of shoots and most of them grew 12 to 18 inches but they have a diameter smaller than a pencil. The best graft wood usually comes from young rapidly growing trees.  I’ve became more impressed with two of the varieties planted in my orchard.  The two varieties are Prilop and Jenkins.  These are considered low input varieties.  These two varieties were just about the only trees that produced any nuts last year.  As much graft wood as possible was collected from these trees.  My other varieties are Pawnee, Choctaw, Desirable, Caddo, and Oconee.

One of the biggest problems for 2009 was the weather.  We had a very late April hard freeze.  Most of the trees had broken bud and were growing rapidly.  All the growth on the trees was killed or severely damaged.  The few trees that hadn’t broken bud yet went on to produce a small crop.  The trees that were freeze damaged produced very little.  Then we had the month of almost daily rains starting from the middle of June through the middle of July.  Most of the trees that managed to set a crop scabbed up something terrible.  I’m planning to graft all of my Pawnee to Jenkins or Prilop due to this.  My Pawnee have had severe scab for the last two years.   I expected my Desirable to get scab in wet years but not Pawnee.  It looks like my creek bottom has poor air circulation and I may need to change over to very scab resistant varieties.   There was no scab on Prilop or Jenkins at our orchard.  Scab on other varieties varied by how far they were from the lowest part of the creek bottom.  Most of the natives on my place also lost most of the nuts to scab the last two years.  We do have one massive native that produced a small crop of very small nuts.

Now is a good time for picking up the limbs that always seem to fall from pecan trees.  They are always dropping something it seems but the bigger limbs can cause some damage to mowers.  I usually put them in piles and burn them.  This wood is normally too old to use in a fireplace or a smoker but occasionally you may find a big limb that is worth cutting up.  If you wait another month or so the grass can become tall enough to make it hard to see the fallen limbs.

Now is also a good time to fertilize.  Finding inexpensive fertilizer these days can be a real challenge.  I ended up using a mixture of cotton seed meal, Gardenville soil food,
And some “winterizer” (21-0-4).  The winterizer was on sale at Lowes for $8 per 50 lb. bag.  About 1400 pounds was put around the trees starting at the drip line outward for several feet.  I put out extra fertilizer under and around a couple of my big native trees.  These two trees have produced nuts every year but they are too small to be worth picking up or shelling.  I’m going to see if the size of the nuts can be increase a little with some good fertilization.

I’ve tried several methods to get the fertilizer to the trees including using a 5 gallon bucket, a wheel barrow, pulling a garden cart, hauling the fertilizer to each tree in the back of my truck, and using the front end loader of my tractor.  The fastest and easiest method that I’ve found is to use a garden cart pulled by my riding mower.  My 10 year old son gets a kick out of driving the lawnmower (but for some reason doesn’t want to mow?).  He just now has grown tall enough to reach the clutch on the riding mower (He can’t reach the clutch on the tractor yet) I walk beside the cart and throw out the fertilizer as we slowly pass by or stop at each tree.  The truck and tractor method work okay but you spend a lot of time getting in and out of the truck or climbing up and down the tractor.  I can get on and off a riding mower much easier than getting in and out of a truck or climbing the tractor when fertilizing alone as well.

Last year the spring freeze not only damaged our pecan trees but also froze our garden to the ground and severely damaged the production of walnuts, grapes, blackberries, peaches, and apples.  We have high hopes for some good growth and production this year and we are ready for some warm sunny weather!

Nearly two inches long and found across the eastern U.S. as far west as Texas, this gray and black and white insect is one of the largest members of the Click Beetle Family (Elateridae); the huge eyespots on its pronotum make it one of the most easily identified. These are “false eyes,” of course–likely an adaptation to scare off potential predators. The true eyes of the Eyed Click Beetle are much smaller and located at the bases of its heavily sawtoothed antennae (below left).

Despite their differences in appearance, all Click Beetles have a startling behavior that demonstrates how they got their primary name–as well as the alternate names of “snapping beetle,” “skipjack,” and “spring beetle.” When placed on its back–or when grabbed by an insectivore–a Click Beetle bends its head and prothorax backward and then straightens out suddenly with a snapping motion, which results in an audible click and launches the beetle several inches into the air. This stunt is facilitated by a spine on the underside of the prosternum that fits into a groove in the mesosternum (below).

Occasionally, a Click Beetle will take flight during its midair maneuver, but more often it simply falls back to earth. If it lands on its back, the beetle may “click” again, or it may tightly tuck its legs and antennae and “play possum” until the predator loses interest. Eventually, it will wander off, perhaps looking for food (flower nectar or leaf sap) or a mate.

Click Beetles–like bees, ants, butterflies, and some other insect orders–undergo a four-stage (complete) metamorphosis that includes the egg, larva (AKA “grub”), pupa, and adult. Although adults are harmless, Click Beetle larvae cause significant agricultural and horticultural damage. Click Beetle grubs–also known as “wireworms” because of their elongated shape and hard exoskeletons (above right)–live in soil or dead wood for two to ten years, depending on the species. During that time, they chow down on roots and stems– including those attached to corn, potatoes, tobacco, turf grasses, garden ornamentals, and a variety of legumes.

I got the idea for building a mini greenhouse from listening to Jack Spirko on TheSurvialPodcast.com. I haven’t really had good results with starting plants inside under grow lights or from placing them in a sunny window sill. The plants come up fine but end up lanky and weak. The look terrible compared to the big (expensive) plants you find at the garden centers.

I’ve always wanted a green house to start my plants in. The problem is the cost . You can drop several thousand dollars for a small one. The mini greenhouse can be built for less than $50 and an hour of your labor.

I built mine out of some left over 2 x 4’s. The greenhouse is 4 x 6 feet and 2 feet tall. It took 7 2 x 4’s . The reason for the 6 foot length was to reduce the number of 2 by’s and to not bee too heavy. The 2 foot leftovers are used in the construction as well.

Steps to building the mini greenhouse.

1. Cut two 2” x 4’ x 8’s in half to give you a a quantity of 4 pieces of 2” x 4” x 4’
2. Cut 2 feet off of 5 2”x 4” x 8’ to yield 5 pieces of 2” x 4” x 6’ and 5 2” x 4” x 2’.
3. Screw or nail together two separate rectangles of 4 by 6 feet.
4. Connect the rectangles together using the 2 foot sections of 2 by’s
5. Use some scrap pieces of lumber to add a little height to the middle of the top.
6. Connect the final 2” x 4” x 6’ to form a taller ridge in the middle (connected to the two scrap pieces in step 5)
7. Cover the frame with 6 mil clear or milky plastic. I used some scrap lumber to hold the plastic to the frame along the long sides.
8. Recommended: strengthen the corners or any sharp edges with shipping tape. The rubbing and flexing of the plastic on the corners will eventually cause some tears in the plastic without some reinforcement.

Using a Mini-Green house:

Put your plants in the mini green house and prop up one edge with a brick or scrap piece of lumber. If you don’t prop it up the plants can easily overheat.

Keep the plants watered and bring them inside when there is a danger of freeze or a frost. The green house does offer some protection from frosts (I left my plants in the green house during one night that had an non-forecasted frost and they survived) but it may not be worth the risks.

The mini greenhouse offers a lot of the advantages of a full size green house including increasing late winter and early spring temperatures enough for germination and good growth and increases the humidity. You can’t beat real sunlight to get plants off to a good start. It also prevents strong winds from stressing the plants.

The mini-green house is light enough to be able to open it (I roll it over on it’s side to water or move the plants) but still heavy enough to not blow over in strong winds. It does not have built in temperature control or heat but appears to work quite well in North Texas to help get your plants off to a good start. And best of all, it doesn’t cost thousands of dollars. After the danger of frost is over, it will go in the barn to be used again next spring.

	Graft wood
	bypass hand pruner
	sharp knife
	rubber bands
	grafting tape (available at most nursery and home improvement stores.  Often sold as green garden stretch tie),
	aluminum foil
	plastic sandwich bags (I like to use the kind that comes on a roll), and something to carry it all in to keep it in easy reach.
	Apron – I use a nail apron for this but have also used a five gallon bucket.  The bucket can also be turned over to use as a chair for working on shorter trees.

Pick a spot on the tree you want to graft that is in the same size range as the graft wood.  Long term it is better to make your graft higher than where a tree shaker will one day attach as the seedling bark is usually rougher and thicker. Cut the tree with the bypass pruners. Cut any limbs that will get in the way of performing the graft on to tree.  This is a good time to cut back any other growth on the tree that is higher than graft from side or other limbs.  You want the graft to be the future dominant central leader. Wrap a rubber band around the tree and roll it down 3 inches or so.  The rubber band will be needed later in the process to temporarily hold things together. Make four straight vertical cuts in the bark on the tree about 1 ½ to 2 inches long.  The four cuts should be at 0, 90, 180, and 270 degrees when viewed from the top. Select a piece of graft wood about the same diameter as where the tree has been cut or maybe a little larger.  If the graft wood is smaller it may still work but the success rate will be lower.
Using bypass pruners, cut off about ½ inch from the bottom of the graft wood.  Note the buds should be pointing up. Remove the lower couple of buds by rubbing them sideways.  You should leave at least two bud packages on the upper part of the graft wood.  Removing the buds makes it easier to perform the graft and also prevents them from growing in the plastic bag that will be added later. Using a sharp knife, make four flat cuts on the graft wood about the same length as you made on the tree earlier.  These cuts should not be very deep.

When done properly the round graft wood will end up almost square and there will a section of bark between each cut extending all the way to the end.  If you end up with no bark showing between two flat sections, either cut the graft wood shorter and try again or discard it and try again using a new piece.

Peel the four flaps of bark back on the tree like peeling a banana .

To avoid prolonged exposure of the cambium tissue, only perform this step when you are ready to immediately place the graft wood in place.

Using the bypass pruners, cut out the center section of wood.  Hold the flaps of bark out of the way to prevent damaging them with the bypass pruners.
Note: the bypass pruners and your hands should be free of oil.

The center section is removed, and the four flaps remain. Place the prepared graft wood between the four flaps.  Try to align them so the narrow sections of bark line up with the cuts on the tree and the flat sections line up with the flaps of bark Roll the rubber band up to hold the four flaps of bark in place.  This should also prevent the graft wood from falling out of the tree while you are working on the next steps. Using a section of grafting tape, start wrapping the graft firmly starting below the cuts on the tree to above any cuts on the graft wood and then back to the bottom again.

Overlap each wrapping slightly.  Leave a short piece sticking out as you begin wrapping and you will have something to tie on to when you complete it.  Tie off the grafting tape to itself.

Remove the rubber band being very careful not to damage any of your buds on the graft wood. Place a piece of aluminum foil (most reflective side out) around the wrapped area.   This is to keep the graft cool and moist while the cambium tissues grow together. Tear a hole in one of the corners of a plastic bag and place it over the graft being careful not to damage any of the buds.

Tie the bag in place using two short pieces of grafting tape above and below the wrapping but still within where the aluminum foil is covering the graft.

The initial graft is complete but we are not quite done.  There is some aftercare.

If the buds start growing in less than a week the graft will most likely fail.  The vascular systems of the tree and graft wood usually need at least two weeks to join together and make a successful graft.

It is a good sign if the buds start swelling in two to six weeks and then growth may begin on the graft.  You will need to prevent any other shoots from becoming dominant during the first growing season.  The other buds on the tree will usually break before those on the graft and they can easily outgrow the shoots on the graft.

If after six weeks there is not any bud swell, the graft will most likely fail.  You can scratch the bark on the graft wood and see if it is still green.  As long as the bark remains green there is always hope.  If it looks like the graft is going to fail, allow the tree to grow as there is always next year to try again on another shoot.  You can also try bud grafting July through August on some of the new shoots from below the graft.

Once the dominant shoot on the graft wood has grown six inches or so, you may want to brace it with something. I  usually use a  stick left over from clearing or a piece of bamboo.  You  can use grafting tape to attach the stick to the tree in a couple of places and loosely tie the growing shoot to it.   I’ve had several grafts blow out in thunderstorms and now I brace any that make much growth the first year.  I haven’t had any grafts blow out after the first growing season.

At some point you can remove the bag, foil and grafting tape from the graft. I usually wait until the next winter but only because I just don’t get around to it until then.

At some point you will need to remove all the growth from below the graft.  You can do this gradually over several seasons or all at once.  Don’t be surprised if you get a lot of growth if in one season you remove many side limbs below the graft .  I usually let the tree tell me how much to remove.  If the growth on the graft is slow, I will remove all growth and limbs below the graft.  If the growth on the graft is more than six feet in one season, I may only cut off the lowest limbs below the graft.

Shuck split began at the first of the month on some of the native pecans.  This usually happens on the smaller nuts first but not always.  The Pawnee and Caddo varieties split earlier than some of the natives.

Since most of out native are too small to be worth picking up, me and the kids went to a local park that has some native trees.  We picked several 5 gallon buckets of pecans right off the trees shucks and all.  We found out this may not be the best harvesting method as you have to peel the shucks and dispose of them.  We also discovered you need to wear gloves as the juice of the shucks will permanently stain your fingers and nails.  A 5 gallon bucket of pecans in the shuck yields about a gallon of pecans.

On another “pecaning” trip we used a 10 foot piece of 1 inch PVC water pipe to thrash another couple of buckets of nuts to the ground.  We’ve had so much rain in north Texas in October the normal spring type tools used to pick up pecans would only push the nuts in to the ground without picking them up.

Due to a late freeze this year only a few of the improved variety trees at our place have any nuts on them.  So far only Pawnee and Caddo have shuck split on them.  The Choctaw and Oconee have not split shuck yet.  The few Desirable and Choctaw that did produce were pretty much stripped by the squirrels well before they were ripe (at least ripe enough for humans).  There were a lot of nuts on the ground with one end bitten out of them.

We do have one large native pecan tree on our place about 4 feet in diameter that we have been harvesting nuts from.  It produces a very small tear drop shaped nut with a very thick shell.  I have been experimenting with fertilizing it to see of the nuts get any bigger.  The leaves are very small on the massive tree with only a couple of inches of new growth every year.

The first year the nuts were a little bigger but still too small to be worth picking up.  This year they are a little bigger yet and the leaves and shoots are starting to get a little bigger.  This makes me wonder what my other natives would do if they were fertilized?  I may try a healthy does of fertilizer and zinc to this one and a couple of others next year.

About half of the natives on my place lose all their nuts to scab and powdery mildew every year.  2/3rds of our orchard is in a creek bottom that stays humid and hosts every pecan pest and disease known to pecans.

This year the web worms and twig girdlers have been particularly bad.  We have several 5 year old improved trees that have lost over 10 percent of shoots to twig girdlers.   This is caused by a large black beetle looking bug that chews a complete circle around the shoots and lays her eggs in the chewed ends.  Many times the shoots don’t break or fall until there are some winds.  Scab and powdery mildew were bad this year on the trees in the bottom.   The higher in the tree and the areas with  better air circulation had much less problems with these leaf and nut diseases.

There may also be some problems with the pecan weevil in my orchard.  I think some of these were brought in by the free mulch I got from a recycling center.  Being in a creek bottom with lots of native didn’t help either.  I have found a few adult weevils on some of my trees.  There is also the tale tale damage on some of the shucks.  It looks like a bulls eye where the weevil stuck it’s snout through the shuck and walked around in circles to literally drill a hole in the shell of the nut and lay eggs in the developing pecan.

I’m going to try to remove every nut from every one of my young trees in an attempt to break the reproductive cycle of this pest.  I haven’t cracked enough nuts yet to see how bad a problem they are going to be but I fear the worst.  So far I haven’t seen any of the small exit holes in the nuts where the “red head”

It seems like pecan trees are always dropping something all year.  In the spring it is the male flowers.  Then later it is small nuts normally called June drop.

During the summer the urine and mold from aphids can coat the leaves and anything under the tree in honeydew.  The nuts that abort, have disease or pest problems continue to turn black and fall of the tree through the fall.  Twig girdlers damage and shading can cause small and large branches alike to fall during storms or strong winds.

Of course in the fall the nuts, shucks and leaves fall.  The nuts can continue to fall all winter.  Winter ice storms can cause light damage to total destruction of pecan trees in our area of the country.