Walnuts are the fruit of healthy energy from the garden

fromMarianne Shaw Hilgert

If you put a few walnuts on the table with a glass of wine after a cozy fall dinner, you’ll also stimulate conversations with this super-healthy fall fruit as the nutcracker moves from hand to hand.

You have to peel the soft shell from the kernel of fresh nuts, which taste very bitter. When dried this bitter taste largely disappears.

Although walnuts contain a lot of fat, they contain almost exclusively healthy, unsaturated fatty acids, including the especially valuable omega-3 fatty acids. Vitamins And minerals.

Walnuts without mold from the garden

If you discover fungal webs or even mold inside them when you break them, you should immediately put those nuts in the organic waste. Many of these molds secrete toxic mycotoxins. They damage the liver and kidneys, and the subset of aflatoxins is also considered a carcinogen. Unfortunately, mycotoxins are heat-resistant, so suspect nuts are not suitable for baking.

If you have your own walnut tree in your garden, you can do a lot to harvest mostly healthy walnuts. Shortly before the green outer shell of the nut opens on the tree and reveals the kernel, the grass below the crown area is briefly mowed. Once the nuts fall, it is best to collect them daily, especially in wet weather and after strong winds. I then fill the collected treasures in a single layer into stackable mesh boxes. The set of boxes is now placed on the tiled stove if the heat is already on. The bottom bin remains empty because the nuts must not heat more than 40 degrees when drying, otherwise the delicate fatty acids will change.

Read about this too

If the weather is sunny, you can also dry the boxes at an angle in the sun. Or you can put it on the boiler in the boiler room when the outside weather is humid. It is best to move the nuts into each position every day using hand motions. This ensures quick drying in the best possible way.

Unfortunately, diseases and pests of the green peel, which turns it into black mud, have also spread in recent years. As long as the nuts are of normal size, this is annoying but not harmful to our health. Slightly affected nuts should be cleaned as best as possible. Anyone who cleans them when they are wet should dry them very carefully.

You should collect acorns from nature only after seeking permission from the tree owner. It is also recommended to use only fresh nuts on top. Longer storage periods in wet bushes often lead to endophytic fungal infection.

Allow the birds to peck the empty shells and then scatter them around the garden as mulch

Bird lovers first place the shell waste in a wide, shallow basin or in a flat cardboard box on the porch. Birds will soon begin searching for small nut crumbs. Large quantities of peel residue are ideal as mulching material in perennials or woody areas, including tree chips in an orchard. Small amounts are added to the compost as a long-acting diluent to form humus.

Walnut is a tree that adapts well to summer drought. Private walnut nurseries also offer slightly weaker-growing varieties with large, fine-shelled nuts or even varieties with a decorative purple-red inner shell. If you have space for such a summer canopy that provides shade, you should opt for these selected varieties. Tree seedlings and self-planted walnut trees carry the risk of obtaining small, hard-shelled fruits.

By the way, walnuts spice up many everyday fall dishes. Our standard is lamb lettuce with a dressing made of sour cream, diced garlic, nuts, vinegar, pepper, and salt.