Nötodling in Sweden – From 9: The million dollar question

In the latest post in the almost endless series of nötodling in Sweden, I went through the nutritional values ​​of different nuts. The thing that stands between me as a nut lovers and the fine industry is often incredibly hard shell. So how do you get the cores from the nuts really?

Before we try to answer that question, it may be worth taking a look at the return for each of the nuts, so that we know how many kilograms of nuts we can expect to get cracking. As the table below shows, we can get a lot of nuts to crack if we bothered to wait a decade or so. We are focusing on hazelnuts, we can expect 2 to 4 kg of nuts per tree after only a few years. If we compare with some of our usual crops, the yield of the trees really good. Unsprayed oaks and chestnuts gives in theory just as much yield sprayed and artificially fertilized wheat fields. Only (even more sprayed) potatoes have been far higher return than any other crop. It's important to remember that these figures are taken from other climate zones, the lack of data from Nordic cultures, so you have to take them with a grain of salt. Regardless, the hammer will not be sufficient in length to buckling tools. And nor do we hold on and pinch your fingers with the kind of nutcracker that most people probably already have at home.

*Average Combine between 1990-2013 from Swedish fields (not ecological).
**Average Combine 2004-2013 from Swedish fields (not ecological).

Of course, this is not a new issue that humanity faces and there are a lot of tools that have been developed in different parts of the world to access the good cores. A few years ago I was on nötodlingskurs of Martin Crawford and he has a pretty extensive collection of nutcrackers on different scales. We got to test them all with all sorts of different types of nuts. Something that united many of the simpler modern buttons are for home use is that they are cone-shaped, so that they can easily accommodate different sizes of nuts. Small nuts fall further down, large nuts stuck higher up. The model that worked absolute best was named Drosselmeyer Nutcracker, who against all odds is designed in Sweden. It's the Nutcracker I use mostly and I think it is so good that I have included it in Skogsträdgårdsshoppens assortment. It works great for hazelnuts, genuine walnuts, almonds, pecans, hjärtnötter etc..

The limit for Mr. Drosselmeyer yesterday at the rock hard walnut relatives Japanese, Manchurian, gray and black walnut. Have you lucky enough to have such nuts at home need more robust tools. A hammer does the job, but do not want to look nutshell rest of the day, you should use something a little more sophisticated. There are a few American models intended for black walnuts and one of them I tested with Martin Crawford.

Unfortunately they are quite expensive (round 1500 kr + Shipping from the US who may be at 600 £ or more), so I welded together our own version with proper lever. It has absolute potential to improve and I would be very happy if someone wanted to take on the challenge of building a nutcracker that can handle black walnuts and where the shell and the core is not flying in all directions when you strum the nuts.

Starting to get a bigger production and may want to sell some nuts (something that Martin Crawford gets a nice extra income from) one needs to find nutcracker that can handle more than one key at the same time. A simple and quite effective hand cranked version I tested with Martin Crawford and it worked absolutely best for genuine walnut. Although it is quite expensive.

Martin Crawford himself has designed an electric nötknäpparmaskin which he demonstrated on the course. It handled a number of kilos of hazelnuts in seconds. To get clear cores from residual shell, he uses a large fan that spit out the shells straight into the forest garden. There are half a detailed drawing of the machine in Agroforestry News Vol. 13 No. 3, s. 28 for those who are interested in how the work. My dream is a hand-cranked machine that is in the same class as Martin Crawford electric appliance and if someone has the knowledge needed to build such a, feel free to contact me!

Actually, the series of nötodling supposed to end here, but the topic is almost inexhaustible, so in the next post I will tell you about some exciting nöttallar that I planted in Putt Myra forest garden for a couple of weeks ago!

References

[1] Crawford, M., Nut Crops – Appendices, 2012.
[2] Crawford, M., The oaks. Agroforestry News, 20(1): p. 1-40, 2011.
[3] Board of Agriculture. Harvests in the kingdom after the crop year 1965-2013. Accessed 2015-01-15, 2013.
[4] Duke, J.A., The. Purdue, C. Center for New, and P. Plant. Handbook of energy crops. Accessed; Available from: http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/duke_energy/dukeindex.html, 1983.
[5] Toensmeier, E., Perennial Staple Crops, in Permaculture Activist, 2012.
[6] Nylinder, B., Nötodling southern Sweden – with focus on hazel, 2013.