Pecan Growing Dates to 1500s

The history of pecans can be traced back to the 16th century. The only major tree nut grown naturally in North America, the pecan is considered one of the most valuable North American nut species.

The name “pecan” is a Native American word of Indian origin that was used to describe “all nuts requiring a stone to crack.”

Our early pecans were first harvested in the Mississippi delta and Mexico by Indian tribes and were a major food source during autumn. It is also said that pecans were used by them to make a fermented intoxicating drink called “Powcohicora” where the word “hickory,” a close kin, comes from.

Believe it or not, history says that the first pecans planted in the U.S. took place in Long Island, N. Y. in 1772. By this time, and later, pecans were planted all along the gulf coast and in many yards and gardens throughout the south. New Orleans, close to the mouth of the Mississippi became very important to the marketing of pecans at this time.
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Pecan groves and orchards throughout this area consisted of diverse nuts with various sizes, shapes, shell thickness, flavor, fruiting ages and ripening dates. There were occasional discoveries of a wild trees with unusually large, thin shelled nuts, which were high in demand by customers.

Then, in 1876, a Negro slave gardener by the name of Antoine, successfully propagated pecans by grafting a superior wild pecan to “seedling” stock and called it “Centennial.”

Pecan trees bloom in the early spring and later small pecan clusters appear after the bloom and then this cluster of nuts continues to grow throughout the summer. Finally in late October the nut clusters are larger and nuts are covered with a green hull.

Then as the pecans dry more the hull covering begins to open slowly and when finally fully open and dry they are ready to harvest. A tree shaker speeds this process up and all the nuts fall to the ground and are then harvested and cleaned and ready for market.

Pecans grew in popularity for years to come and many big orchards were planted and cultivated throughout the south and particularly along the gulf coast. Albany, Ga. became our main focus for pecan growing and propagation and today it is big business in Georgia.

It is noted that “seedling” pecans are really native pecans and come in many sizes and configurations. If you prepare and plant any seedling nut it will come up and bear seedling pecans but if you plant the nut and as the shoot appears, graft it with a better variety, it will grow into that variety as it produces nuts in the future.

There are now many improved varieties on he market including the Stuart, Desirable, Money Maker and many more but the ones with a bright yellow kernel and an extra thin shell sell the best. Seedlings are still very plentiful on the local markets usually bought by a local facility that may buy, sell, crack and shell these delicious nuts.

You will note here that many yards throughout Georgia have big pecan trees that furnish shade as well as nuts at harvest time to be enjoyed by the family. This was a very popular process in the early 1900s throughout Georgia and now some of these trees are a 100 years old and still bearing.

Many are still “seedlings” but improved varieties are there too.

When we plant pecan trees we buy the young, already grafted, nut stock from the nursery and plant them in orchards about 70 feet apart. We dig a big hole about two feet in diameter and three feet deep and place the nursery stock in the hole. When the nursery digs them to sell they cut off some of the “tap” root which is very important to the future health of the tree.

These plantings require fertilizer and lots and lots of water. We used a large tank on a wagon and watered regularly in the first year. These trees now take about six to 10 years of growth to start producing a limited amount of good nuts. They require a lot of nitrogen which makes the “terminal growth” grow long and thus contain more nuts.

Finally, with a lot of care, in about 16 years you have a full grown young tree that has a fairly big crop. As it grows bigger the crop produced gets bigger, but again it requires a lot of fertilizer or you have the regular, one good year and three bad ones as a lot of yard trees do.

Harvesting at the proper time is very important and requires a lot of high priced machinery. In late November the nut “husk” is opening and the new nut is dry and ready to fall. We speed this up a bit with a “tree shaker” attached to a tractor which vigorously shakes the tree until most of the nuts fall to the ground.

Now we go through the orchard with a “pecan harvester” with several hundred rubber fingers attached to a big drum that turns and flips the nuts onto a metal type belt with a big fan continually blowing under them and blowing most all the leaves and small sticks out the back and also removing any big limbs by another belt.

This final product goes into a big hopper on the machine that we now dump into a dump wagon and take to the cleaner. Our cleaner is in a barn and we dump directly into its hopper that has a metal track that pulls these pecans over another large fan that re-cleans the nuts and deposits them on a belt where workers fine grade them.

From here the cleaned nuts are augured into big field boxes that weigh about 1200 pounds, sitting on pallets. Later we lift these big boxes with a loader and place same on a flat bed trailer and then take them to a sheller or processor some miles away. This goes on throughout December until all nuts are harvested and cleaned and delivered. There are very few operations of this kind now left in Jasper County.

The orchards are still there but sadly they have mostly been abandoned and produce no nuts. South Georgia is still big in the pecan business and produces tons of pecans. I know one big grower who today has 2.5 million pounds of pecans in cold storage waiting to sell and deliver to the Chinese and Japanese markets.

Big orchards of a thousand or more trees in one spot and pecan cleaning operations and pecan brokers are active throughout South Georgia. Pecans are big business and Georgia is one of the biggest producers.

Go ahead folks, get some good trees at the nursery and plant them and soon you will have great shade as well a a nut harvest to enjoy or help pay “taxes.”