Gardening with Gary

Gardening Advice from an Expert

Walnut Trees

Q. Is there any way to stop a walnut tree from producing walnuts without killing the tree and leaves itself?

A. No, sorry, you cannot disrupt a plant's reproduction without its probable death. A tree is here to make seeds and they are inside the walnut, ready to sprout and form a new small tree or sapling, and send forth a new generation of its species. If there was a way to kill off the nuts and not the leaves which produce the food for the tree, then the tree could not make its own kind and would die.

You can cut back in the amount of nuts produced by pruning the tree each spring and thinning out a lot of its branches. This will also give that area below more sunlight.

Do as we have done with our stately black walnut out back in Toledo for over 40 years [and it was there at least 60 year before that!] is to rake up the nuts and keep the lawn clear of all the huge leaves and stems which fall during the summer from storms and then really drop once the fall arrives.

Be careful to keep all your vegetable plants [especially tomatoes] away from the reaches of the walnut as most species give off a toxin in their roots which causes wilt and death when the young vegetable plants send their roots down into the walnut root zone.