large_seeds

J Pride    says:

Lovely seed-y photo. But your comment implies that there are foods you *shouldn't* put in the compost. Walnuts have tannins? I thought that was wine!
Posted 51 months ago. ( permalink )

sillydog    says:

red wines may have some tannins, as a by-product of the 2nd fermentation. The walnut is not high in tannins. I'm thinking of the Oak. The walnut is high in Juglones.

Juglone is a compound found in the fruit and leaves of the so-called English Walnut (aka Persian Walnut, Juglans regia) and the whole Juglans genus to some degree. The compound is alellopathic. That is, it interferes with many plants' ability to properly function by disrupting a required bio-chemical pathway, similar to many herbicides. It belongs to a family of compounds known as quinones. As a group of chemicals the other alellopathic compounds found include phenols, phenolcarboxylic acids and hydrocinnamic acid. Several of these compounds are found in varous Oak (Quercus) species, which tend to be very high in tannins.

Alellopathic responses are important for the purposes of managing trees because you can use this kind of information to let them control their own weeds while you pick things that will survive w/o problem and they compliment each other to become the self-sustaining community (in the ecological sense of the word) Alellopahty also provides protection from pests.

from ecsu:

Perhaps the most commonly known case of allelopathy is the production of growth inhibiting juglone by walnut (Juglans regia) trees. As walnut leaves and fruits break down in the soil beneath the trees, juglone is leached out and accumulates in the soil. This chemical inhibits growth of grasses and vegetables. If your tomato plants will not produce fruits and seeds, you might check to see whether a nearby tree is a walnut...it could be a biotic factor in your garden! You will notice that it is not a competitive exclusion, rather it is allelopathic exclusion.

It killed my potato vines that had grown well in the bamboo leaf, grill and fireplace ash and kitchen scraps compost. I still got the small potatoes that had managed to grow up before the top dressing of evil. We shall see what the compost I made from it does to the spirea. It's a fine crumble and I'm anxious to use it where I can.

Also to succumb to the julone-laced compost were carrots, squash (with the exception of one harassed pumpkin and an anemic cucumber. Beans and mustards did well, so I'm attempting to plant my brassica (broccoli, kale, cauliflower, cabbage, turnip, mustard, etc...) and onion tribe seedlings. I now know to plant my celery seedlings in pots. The tree leafs out late (June), and I think will make a decent winter garden under plastic if I observe the toxin tolerance of the seedlings.

The toxic walnut, that I spent hours gathering nuts from, and battling squirrels for, and staining my hands brown w/ the hulls, also has a bacterial blight. Turns out that's why the hulls got all rotten so fast and turned to mush as they did. I got very few decent nuts - these are fit as squirrel food, mostly. At least I had a gooe reason to listen to books-on-tape.

There was about 1,5 hrs sunlight in the mid afternoon on the 'lil garden. Watering was spotty when they were planted, which is my fault, as they could have been sewn when there was still ample water falling, as is the case pretty much from Febuary-on in this climate. Cool weather has it's disadvantages, too -- sodden soils warm much slower because of the energy-sticky properties of water. Fungal and bacterial pressures are high here. Allowing a certain amount of ecology to guide your planting decisions helps alot.

As it was, the severe hacking back of a trupet vine, up wind of the garden, caused a bunch of lush growth. The Euonymous bush in the front always gets mildew. The trumpet vine is normally immune, but it didn't have as tough of leaves as normal -- they were infected. When the large leaves of the squash got wet one day w/ watering, they picked up the spores and were shortly dying. The rest of the usual inhabitants of the yard continued to do well.
Posted 51 months ago. ( permalink )

Voxphoto    says:

Hmm, this looks like a promising soup mix!

In its natural range, walnut often grows in lowlands; the high soil moisture there tends to dilute the juglones so the allelopathy isn't so extreme. But I guess when they get moved into people's yards, they just don't realize "enough is enough."

The most vicious example of allelopathy is probably spotted knapweed. That stuff is just loaded with nasty sap. It's quite capable of enforcing a total knapweed monoculture via chemical warfare. Some people--I'm one of them--get a skin reaction to it as bad as poison ivy.
Posted 51 months ago. ( permalink )

samgrover    says:

Good picture, and quite an essay in the follow up comment, although you lost me at "Juglone" ;-)
Posted 51 months ago. ( permalink )

sillydog    says:

And I was trying not to sound to science-y....

@vox: that's fascinating about the spotted knapweed. I heard about it in the few Rangeland Rescources classes I took @ OSU, though they were more fond of talking about the Tansy Ragwort Mennace, as they'd actually found a solution to that one (bio-control by beetle).

I'm just imagining the squirrels, rolling nuts down the hill, in an effort to work with the downslope.

Careful that stuff though. We have impressive populations of poison oak out here and I've heard of people dying from especially severe reactions.
Posted 51 months ago. ( permalink )