Black walnuts - cracking the shells

My husband and I are in the process now of shelling black walnuts harvested from a tree in our yard. They had been husked, cleaned, and cured.

What I'm seeing now is that most of them are dried up, blackish, and withered, although a few are brown and tasty. What did we do wrong to have most of them them blacken and wither?

As you undoubtedly know by now, harvesting and cleaning black walnuts is a messy process. Suggestions rom the University of Minnesota extension service here and here.

Here is a photo essay from a homeowner who harvests black walnuts.

Here's one from the Iowa State University Extension Service.

Unfortunately, none of the articles you so kindly posted answers my question. We did everything that was said in the articles, but still don't know why a few a the nuts were full and brown (and very tasty, by the way), but the rest were withered and black. All were treated exactly alike.

I took the few black walnuts that were good, mixed them with English walnuts, and baked them in an apple bread. It was very good.

We did enough of the black walnuts to have the processing down to a science. My husband used a hevay hammer on them to husk them and a vice to crack them. Everything was rolling along fine until we saw the disappointing results. :(

Did they sit on the ground a long time before you harvested them?

Nope. We picked them up as soon as they fell from the tree. We did that daily. It was fun to see who could collect more - my husband or myself!

In all the years we've lived here (30 years!), this is the first year we actually harvested those nuts. I guess, since this was the year I wanted to do local produce and that tree was on our front lawn, I figured that was as local as I could get!

The only thing I can think of which might have caused them to dry them out like that was that we left them overnight in an unlit gas oven (per instructions I read somewhere). If that was the cause of the withering, then they all should have been withered, but that wasn't the case. The few we didn't put in the oven, we haven't opened yet, but some of them turned moldy. I threw out the moldy ones.

Is there a time which is too late to crack open the nuts? We waited 6 weeks to open them (again, per instructions from somewhere).

*still puzzled*

I'm no expert -- but I think you should be able to leave them in shell for quite some time. I wonder about the husks, maybe they should be removed right away.

Is there and extension service or agricultural dept you could call in your area?

Check this article here, http://organicgardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/black_walnut_toxicity

edited to add, This article was more about how some other plants could wither if near a black walnut tree but I wonder if the natural (although toxic) chemical emitted called juglone could have smeared on some of the shells, and caused the withering of the nuts inside?

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I probably could all an extension service - or even email them here in Maryland. I'm going to wait until my husband finishes with the rest of them. He got tired of cracking them and is waiting for another day.

We did remove the husks pretty much right away - at least within a few days, so that they were still green and did nto start to rot.

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When we husked the shells we washed off the remaining juglone as best as we could with brushes. The shells appeared to be tight at that time. When we opened the shells, it did not appear as if juglone was inside as the inside of the shells were nice and brown. I'm wondering if there was something wrong with the nuts before we even tried to open them?

Pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/squeakychu/sets/72157609327460539/show/

Maybe they weren't fertilized.

Hey, we're following each other around LT tonight, Squeaky!

Hmmm? I'll keep investigating this issue.