Acorns

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  • Rocky 2 buckets
    Rocky 2 buckets Forum Participant Posts: 7,101
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    edited October 2022 #92

    Taken from the Beech(mast) years. Excellent old names & customs of collecting them. I knew an old couple in our Village who collected Beech mast to make unguents. Long gone now I’m afraid🙁

  • mickysf
    mickysf Forum Participant Posts: 6,474 ✭✭✭
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    edited October 2022 #93

    Would you Adam and Eve it? Went to the Museo del Jamón today. Many different hams to try and buy. They told us that many of the most expensive ‘vintage’ hams, and they are spectacular expensive, are produced during a mast season when the pigs are let loose in the forests to forage. They gorge on the acorns which produces a particular high quality product. Apparently their rooting around is also very positive for wildlife and habitat enrichment. 

  • brue
    brue Forum Participant Posts: 21,176 ✭✭✭✭✭
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    edited October 2022 #94

    A bit like the New Forest then, the Pannage season for pigs starts in late September. smile

  • Fisherman
    Fisherman Forum Participant Posts: 2,367
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    edited September 2023 #95

    Plenty of acorns down after this wing. How about this. Go and pick a dozen, plant them in soil or compost and replant the young trees next spring or the following year. Could be a good place alongside a dead or dying Ash to give some regeneration. Just planted 60 for that very reason.

  • Fisherman
    Fisherman Forum Participant Posts: 2,367
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    edited October 19 #96

    Strange but very few acorns this year.Most other tree and hedgerow plants have plenty of fruit. I'm finding it difficult to replace the saplings in my small nursery bed this year. 

  • eribaMotters
    eribaMotters Club Member Posts: 1,193 ✭✭✭✭
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    edited October 19 #97

    The season is totally different. Last year leaf fall was also far greater, most were in my gutters that needed cleaning at least daily. This year I'm only doing it every few days.

     

    Colin

  • nelliethehooker
    nelliethehooker Club Member Posts: 13,636 ✭
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    edited October 19 #98

    The storms tomorrow may well correct that, Colin.

    Fisherman, we too have noticed a sparcity of acorns, but did plant up 8 today, including a couple that had started to shoot. Will now have to wait and see what develops.

  • mickysf
    mickysf Forum Participant Posts: 6,474 ✭✭✭
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    edited October 19 #99

    The sweet and horse chestnut trees in our local park seem to have bumper crops this autumn, as have the hazels. Do the species take it in turn or is it all down to the seasonal patterns?

  • Fisherman
    Fisherman Forum Participant Posts: 2,367
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    edited October 20 #100

    Just shows how diverse nature is and the folly of looking at short term trends. I find that planting in a nursery bed and replanting saplings at 1/2 years old gives a much better return, but it is a longer time scale commitment.

  • eurortraveller
    eurortraveller Club Member Posts: 6,828 ✭✭✭
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    edited October 20 #101

    Is 400 years of commitment enough? The tree survey man says that’s about the age of our biggest oak tree here at home. Perhaps a squirrel dropped an acorn then, but with no acorns this year the squirrels who live in that tree now are really searching for other food. So they go 500 metres up the hill to a sweet chestnut tree and carry the prickly things back in their mouths and work out how to open them when they get back here to safety.

  • Fisherman
    Fisherman Forum Participant Posts: 2,367
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    edited October 20 #102

    Lost you euro

  • mickysf
    mickysf Forum Participant Posts: 6,474 ✭✭✭
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    edited October 20 #103

    Absolutely Fish, as the world climate is changing and with it the range of species which now flourish here and those that will flourish in the future. Not a short term thing is it and given our interference a rather unpredictable but worth intervention like yours could be most helpful. Keep planting, maybe more sweet chestnuts mind the way things are headed as ‘species shift happens’!

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