How to grow your own nuts - Martin Crawford

This is the definitive book on growing your own nuts written by Martin Crawford, the leading forest gardening expert. Nut trees are perennials, requiring little maintenance or soil cultivation, so it is no surprise that nuts are the ideal forest garden crop. How to grow your own nuts is a beautifully presented and comprehensive guide to selecting, cultivating, harvesting and processing all types of nuts. Here are old favourites like hazelnuts and walnuts alongside less common varieties such as hickories and butternuts and the exotically named chinkapin. Filled with gorgeous illustrations of trees and nuts in all stages of maturity, this book will inspire gardeners, homesteaders and commercial farmers with its clear and detailed instructions. For everyone who wants to grow their own food and aim at self-sufficiency, this book is a must.

Throughout the book we learn how delicious, nutritious and versatile nuts are. Nuts are at the heart of our culinary tradition. They have everything for health: magnesium to lower blood pressure; low carbohydrate to control blood sugar; high protein to keep our energy up, and healthy fats to help absorb vitamins. They are chock full of antioxidants. Eating a daily portion of nuts could lengthen your life, as nuts decrease the risk of heart and neuro-degenerative diseases. Recent Harvard studies indicate that eating pecan nuts increase the survival rates of prostate cancer. For vegetarians and vegans in particular, nuts are a crucial source of protein, but they are enjoyed by many more worldwide as a delicious alternative protein from meat.

Martin describes how nuts can be planted singly in a small area, ingroups in an orchard or nuttery, as silvopasture around grazing animals, in alley cropping between cereal crops or intercropping between fruit bushes.

Nuts are also multipurpose trees and the A-Z describes their many secondary uses from timber, oil, dyes, fodder and cosmetics to medicines and honey. The beautiful spring blossom, particularly of almond and sweet chestnut, are highly attractive to bees.

Every page is rich with the authenticity, passion and experience of a master grower and forest gardener. Whether you are planning to grow nuts at home or commercially, this book is essential reading.