“I don’t think we’ll ever see commercial pecans north of the current natural range of pecans,” notes William Reid of Kansas Sate University. Dr. Reid is the Pecan Research and Extension Specialist for Kansas and Missouri. “Many have tried, all have failed.”
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So, before you spend money buying trees to establish a pecan orchard, consider that pecan trees don’t grow naturally in our neck of the woods.
“Your closest pecan growers will be located south of Chillicothe along the Grand River,” Dr. Reid notes. “That area represents the northwest limit of the pecan tree’s native range in North America.”
Dr. Reid says the natural distribution of pecan is confined to the center of the country. Why is that? The answer is summer heat, and lots of it.
Mr. Reid states that as a general rule of thumb, even the earliest ripening northern pecans need a minimum of a 180 day frost-free period (based on 28℉) and 950 cooling degree days to properly grow and mature a nut crop.
As you can see by Mr. Reid’s map (below) of the natural distribution of pecan in North America, the Daviess County area is just out of the zone.
The good thing about pecans
Robin Fitzgerald spent a lot of lazy fall days of her childhood picking up pecans from the yard of her rural home near Brunswick, Mo. Her parents, Alice and Carl Fitzgerald, had only a few trees in their backyard in Brunswick, but they produced dozens of pounds of pecans.
“I think I moaned and groaned a lot about the work,” Robin says. “But I miss those times now.”
Though she had four siblings, Robin was usually the one who got the pecan-picking chore after school. She hand-plucked the fallen nuts from the grass and dropped them in baskets or buckets or sometimes a gunnysack. Occasionally her three brothers would help by grabbing a limb and giving it a good shake. Pecans fell like a hail storm.
“We pronounced it pee-cans,” says Robin.
Others pronounce it pee-KAHNs, PEE-cans, pick-AHNs. It depends on what part of the country you’re from.
Of course the pecan growers in Brunswick claim their pecans are the best, the biggest, the most flavorful. They are best eaten straight from the shell…avoid the bitter corky divider between the whole halves.
“I never could do it myself, but my brothers could crack pecans in their hands,” Robin says. “I usually got a hammer and a rock.”
Robin and her mother and her sister got the chore of cracking the pecans around the kitchen table. The job was less tedious when they worked together.
Native pecans have a tougher shell than those you get in the grocery store. The grocery most likely sells paper-shell pecans, which break apart with a gentle squeeze of the hand.
Robin’s mother would put the pecans in the deep freeze because freezing the pecans preserves the taste.
The pecan crop ripens just before the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, so all of the family gatherings Robin can remember feature pecan desserts and candies.
What can you make with pecans? The list is limitless — sweet and spicy pecans, barbecued pecans, sugared pecans, pecan brittle, pecan pralines, pecan meringue chews, pecan clusters. You can put pecans in fudge, brownies, cakes, salads, soufflés. Robin’s favorite is the old standby…pecan pie.
“Nobody skimped on pecans in their recipes,” she says. “There were plenty; so nobody had to.”
Robin, 58, lived in Gallatin and now lives in Cameron. A slice of pecan pie, best served slightly warmed and with a dollop of whipped cream, carries Robin Fitzgerald back to her childhood in Brunswick…the pecan capital of the world.
If you should happen to take a trip to Brunswick, don’t forget to visit its famous concrete giant pecan. The roadside attraction was moved from the James Pecan Farm in 2013 to a more visible spot in Brunswick on West Broadway Street. George and Elizabeth James ran their pecan farm on the outskirts of Brunswick for 60 years. In 1982, they built a concrete replica of their patented Starking Hardy Giant pecan, a strain discovered by George on the property in 1947. It weighs 12,000 pounds and is 7×12 feet.