Looking to plant pecan trees on several acres between Birmingham and Montgomery. Any advice on varieties and source for trees would be appreciated.

I don’t know but you can’t give the Stuart’s away down here right now

Elliots is what I would plant now. I have several Stuart’s and it was a bumper crop of them this year. But when the Stuarts were selling for .40/lb; the elliots were selling at 1.20/lb. Seems like all the trees around my area was loaded.

I planted about 40 trees five or so years ago. You will want to plant bareroot trees and obviously before spring. I can’t remember the name of the nursery I purchased from but it was in Georgia. Look into the cooperative extensions of ga, ms, tx for a lot of good info. Alabama aces has good info too. All the agricultural type universities of the states listed also have good info....and add nm to that. Alabama pecan growers association.com has decent info. You will need both type 1 & 2 trees for proper pollenizing. Prices do fluctuate yearly due to production. This year there are bumper crops everywhere that didn’t get hit by hurricanes so the markets are flooded and prices are low. Prices always start high and go to low as supply increases during harvest season. This is one of the reasons full on commercial pecan farms use shakers which does hurt the tree but knocks all of the nuts down right at shuckslplit.... and way before they would fall on there own which allows them to get good prices.

When I planted I used:

Stuart, desireable, cape fear, mahan, sumner, and Elliott. I also had 5preexisting “seedling” trees that are 50 us old.

When some died for various reasons I replaced with potted trees which are more expensive but much further along in age than a bareroot. I have replaced with:

Excell, syrup mill, gafford, and McMillan

There is a fair amount of work even in a small orchard so it’s not a set it and forget it deal.
I’m no expert in the business but did Hours of research And planning before planting and along the way.

Good luck

Shakers do not hurt the trees it should say

Cletus
Why did you plant so many dif varieties?
What’s the benefit? Pollination?

No real reason other than it’s what I wanted to do. But limiting the amount of cultivars in any plant is usually a very big risk for disease wiping out everything instead of just the susceptible variety.

If I had to do it all over again....... I would plant red oak followed by white oak on any available space. And either my son would be sitting pretty when he is older or his children would. But I love how a pecan orchard looks when it is mature.

Also, if you wanted to not sell to the commercial/wholesale buyers Which either ship them straight to China or go to the pecan oil market, then having different types can be a big plus to sale local your self. Ever shelled mahans? You near about can crack everyone with you thumb and forefinger and the kernel % is really high. But lots of folks like different things.

Gotcha.

I planted 50 trees 6 years ago. Mainly Excel because they are scab resistant. I planted a row each of Lakota and Amlin for pollinators. I had my first few pecans this year on a few of the excels.

My house was built in a Pecan Grove, and not to Hijack, but how could I up the productivity
of these things? They're producing some but they're kinda puny looking, like they didnt
develop all the way or something. This is in Baldwin co.
My mom had some up on her place in Talladega co. that literally produced truckloads from
maybe 8-10 trees. And we never did ANYTHING to them.

Try some Zinc

I’m interested in a answer for this too. I walked through a grove the other day and 90% of the ones I cracked were shriveled up and looked like they had been dusted with cinnamon.

YouTube has DIY videos of spraying Zinc.

The storms we had this year messed up a lot of the Pecan crop, made most of them fall to early. I would say 1/3 of the one's we have picked up are edible.

Number every tree and take a soil sample. That’s what my buddy did and he took some old non producers back to raining pecans on a two year span

Good info in this thread. Thank's for posting. I've been wanting to plant a few in the yard just to have for family and friends usage. I'm not in the pecan belt but a little further north on the southern end of Sand Mountain. Are there specific varieties that would do well or at least better around here?

Thanks for the tips.

Thanks to all for the wisdom.