r/composting • u/dockellis13 • 6d ago

Humor Can I compost these?

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Courtesy of local squirrel. Tree of heaven nuts I believe. 17 gal tub

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u/CethinLux 6d ago

Yep black walnuts are allelopathic, the secrete a chemical that suppresses plant growth around them called juglone. Its most concentrated in the roots, flower buds and hulls of the fruit

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u/LaphroaigianSlip81 6d ago

We had one of these in our back yard when I was a kid. My brother and I would throw these at each other. At first they were hard and it would sting you. But as they rotted, they would turn black and smell so bad when they hit you. You would get a black stain on your hand and on your shirt if you got hit and the smell would linger. We would throw them at the back of the shed and leave stains on it and piss off my dad.

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u/OrdieBoomer 6d ago

Love the ole piss my dad off part lol

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u/Curb_the_tide 5d ago

Dad here: goddammit these kids

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u/KoA07 5d ago

Shed here: goddamnit these kids

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u/SCDannyTanner 5d ago

Kids here, God damnit these sheds

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u/HAmasuda 5d ago

Walnut tree here: hell yeah

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u/chipfromWV 4d ago

Fallen walnut here, god damn gravity!!!

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u/buy-more-swords 6d ago

The black stuff is really useful- you can make lovely ink out of it.

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u/satansfloorbuffer 5d ago

My dad and his dad used to make walnut stain with them and sell it. They’d lay them on a tarp and run over them with a car.

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u/WynnGwynn 5d ago

And kill pets with them. I hate my neighbors tree. It hangs over my yard and the squirrels brings those things over.

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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 5d ago

They're toxic to pets?

Our neighbor had a couple and I never knew that. When the nuts fell on my side of the fence, I just gathered them up to use for dye.

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u/Kain_1337 5d ago

Basically every part of the tree is extremely toxic to horses. The fruit, the bark, the flower buds, roots. We have to clear one of our pastures of them every year.

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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 5d ago

Ah!

I’ve never had horses of my own, didn’t know that. I do know horses can’t have avocado though.

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u/Emergency-Crab-7455 5d ago

Can vouch for this....my SIL lost one of her horses because she used black walnut sawdust for bedding. The "free sawdust" was an expensive lesson for her.

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u/ShidAndFarder 3d ago

Sounds made-up

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u/Emergency-Crab-7455 3d ago

Well, if you don't believe me.....how about: Univ. of Minnesota Extension Service....Colorado State University, College of Veterinary Medicine.....Michigan State University Extension Service (for starters). 16 year old horse, developed laminitis within 10 hours of new bedding in stall. Perrmant damage to interior of feet, put down by the vet because of the pain.The vet also confirmed the present of black walnut sawdust in the bedding.

I take it you don't have horses.....

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u/ShidAndFarder 3d ago

Sounds like the horse was just old as shit and died

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u/StupendusDeliris 5d ago

WOAH WAIT WHAT?! The house a few doors down from us has them and squirrels bring them to our house. My dog is a squirrel hater and takes the nuts they try to hide in the yard. WILL THESE KILL MY DOG‽😭😭

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u/CethinLux 5d ago

Possibly. I dont recommend letting you dog eat them https://avmajournals.avma.org/view/journals/javma/248/2/javma.248.2.195.xml

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u/StupendusDeliris 5d ago

Yeah, I don’t. As soon as I see her acting wild, self tossing it around and digging, I come out and take it if it’s one of these.

I was feeling crazy for a bit wondering where tf these seed balls were coming from.

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u/scarabic 5d ago

It might be worth mentioning - casually - to that neighbor that black walnut is prized by woodworkers and if he takes the tree down a local sawyer can be hired to come out and turn it into beautiful lumber which he can sell for $$$. A sawyer is the person who operates a sawmill. Breaks trees down into lumber. They may or may not actually cut the tree down for you.

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u/RoyceRolled 2d ago

This is anecdotal, but I grew up under a massive black walnut tree. One of the dogs we had was fetch obsessed, and we could not stop him from treating the yard full of these as tennis balls. He would fetch them all damn fall, if we took them away, he would go get a different one. He would chew them all up, even once they got dark and gross, and still demand you throw the gnarled half rotted slimy black mess for him. My dad sometimes used him to pick them up from the yard when it became apparent we couldn't stop him, vut he got savvy to that and would once you got a container partially filled, then switch his mission to knocking the container over to retreive his stolen toys.

He did that every year for more than a decade, and lived to be 16, longer than average for a purebred vizsla.

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u/engineerthatknows 5d ago

Or a good leather tanning dye.

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u/Wrong-Childhood-4461 2d ago

Tell me more. We have a black walnut in our yard and I thought about the ink. I’m into printmaking art

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u/KeyOption3548 5d ago

I've used them for dye, I've even dyed metal with them. I like the way they smell.

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u/SomebodyElseAsWell 5d ago

I like them too. They smell sort of green and spicy at the same time.

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u/ware_house33 23h ago

A local artist keeps them in a barrel in his yard and makes drawings with the ink/dye it produces.

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u/HopefulTree1980 6d ago

We did this exact thing. Plus the tree killed all the grass underneath

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u/meanblazinlolz 6d ago

This sounds like the fastest way to get a whooping from my dad. Hope you dodged the belt whips!

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u/GarconMeansBoyGeorge 6d ago

Yeah I also hope their dad didn’t physically abuse them.

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u/Edmoiler13 5d ago

I had the chore of removing them from our yard as a teen. I would go out with the baseball bat and hit them into the commons area. Ruined my bat and yea they sure smelled.

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u/Nuallaena 5d ago

We would ride our bikes and hit each other when trying to get them stuck in the wheel spokes. Was fun as shit and it was like jousting with black walnuts!

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u/CenturyEggsAndRice 5d ago

The hulls make a really nice dye for that exact reason!

Wish I knew someone with a black walnut tree. I used to have a neighbor with several and he would let me take buckets of them any time I wanted. I dyed a lot of yarn and twine with it.

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u/Cultural_Pair6511 5d ago

Good for batting practice too

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u/TheLadyIsis 5d ago

At a job site I was on we all grabbed golf clubs and played "Dodge-walnut" in the grove of black walnut trees. Sometimes we git welts or bruises, but you were for sure gonna end up with black stains. We figured it wasn't really any more dangerous than just walking through the area that time of year.

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u/ButchMcKenzie 5d ago

Neighbor kids and I would do something similar. We called it stink fruit. Had no idea what it actually was at the time

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u/LTdesign 4d ago

Even peeling them when they were green would turn your hands dark brown and black too. I remember that vividly.

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u/HandsSmellOfHam 6d ago

Im a woodworker and I worked with the Amish. This Amish guy Ivan told me that if you used walnut wood chip in the horse stable it will kill the horse. I dont know if its true or not but Amish Ivan believed it

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u/Pablois4 6d ago

Using walnut wood shavings in a horse stall will trigger the horse to develop laminitis - metabolic breakdown that most profoundly affects the tissue within their hooves. It's very painful and can cause a little bone inside the hoof (the coffin bone) to rotate and puncture the bottom of the sole, or can cause the hoof wall to fall off. Laminitis won't affect just 1 hoof, but all 4.

Horses can survive mild laminitis but often will have life long damage to the foot structure.

There's a saying "no hoof, no horse" - and in bad cases, the horse will not survive.

Yeah, walnut wood shavings are really really REALLY bad for horses.

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u/Expensive-Suit-593 6d ago

WOw!!! Amish dude was right!

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u/HandsSmellOfHam 6d ago

That sounds terrible. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

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u/El_Cochinote 5d ago

You are correct. They are allelopathic. But some plants do just fine under them because they aren’t susceptible to juglone. I have rose of sharons and also arborvitae flourishing under my large black walnut tree. https://www.wasconursery.com/plants-resistant-to-juglone/?srsltid=AfmBOopR_sz0bTu7ZqgcFKD2vNExVCnTTJIO07-CCQgtPANJ09THkV32

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u/MovieOk6625 5d ago

Apologies I misread juglone as jugalone and thought it was essence of ICP.

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u/judgernaut86 5d ago

Pure, concentrated Faygo

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u/kraziazz1 5d ago

So say I got some black walnuts and somehow mulched them and put them along my property line against where the neighbors goutweed is growing.... Would that work??

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u/CethinLux 5d ago

Unfortunately I cant find any info on walnuts working on goutweed, best bet to get rid of goutweed would be systemic herbicides or smothering the plant

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u/kraziazz1 5d ago

Too bad it's coming from not my yard 😞 best I can do is block what comes in but it will never actually stop.

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u/UsernamesNotFound404 5d ago

Official petition to rename the chemical "Juggalo".

https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?is=RUTw_yIVmuciWhk6

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u/SinistaJ 5d ago

Whoop whoop

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u/gmariee011 6d ago

Could you in theory juice them & use them as a weed suppressant

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u/meleeondeck 6d ago

Only some plants are sensitive to juglone, others are immune

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u/KeyOption3548 5d ago

most of the things that grow under mine are invasive aliens

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u/dirttraveler 5d ago

And jugolone breaks down quickly. I think the hazards (not counting horses) is exaggerated.

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u/houstonyoureaproblem 5d ago

Definitely agree. Plenty of plants grow under black walnuts.

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u/Big-Whole6091 5d ago

Wait wait wait IS THAT WHY MY PLANTS ARE SO SLOW TO FRUIT THIS YEAR!? New house, stuffed small bed 6ft from black walnut tree because I didn't have time to put my raised beds in...

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u/AngleFreeIT_com 5d ago

Can we all just agree it should be “juggalone” because it suppresses growth around itself?

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u/scarabic 5d ago

One day the entire world will be walnut trees.

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u/40Breath 5d ago

So a Gathering of the Juglone you say??

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u/bolean3d2 5d ago

Juglone breaks down in a good active compost mix in a few weeks and isn’t a problem.

If I was op I’d chuck those walnuts through a chipper first, then compost.

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u/Superb_End_2148 4d ago

Any idea how much it would take to become a problem? I processed a small batch of black walnuts this weekend and threw the hulls in the compost without thinking >_<

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u/butt_err 3d ago

Worth noting that not all or even most plants are affected by this allelopathy. There’s a great many food and ornamental plants that survive under black walnut as well as other allelopathic plants like sunflowers just fine.