Northern Pecan

Size, growth and what to expect

On loamy soils a young pecan may average 35 inches of height growth a year for several years. That is well above the foot and a half a year our growth estimator assumes for a medium tree. A northern pecan becomes a very large tree of 70 to 100 feet and 40 to 75 feet wide. Trees begin to decline at 60 to 200 years.

Trees in natural stands begin bearing at 10 to 20 years, with good crops every 1 to 3 years, and a tree can still bear at 300 years. The nuts run about 100 to 160 to the pound. Male catkins and female flowers open at different times on one tree, so pollen from a second tree within 250 feet sets the crop. Squirrels, turkeys, deer, raccoons and many birds take the nuts.

It grows wild in the lower Mississippi Valley, west to eastern Kansas and central Texas, east to western Tennessee and north into Iowa bottomlands, on deep alluvial loam.

How to grow Northern Pecan

A northern pecan wants full sun and deep, moist ground that does not bake dry in summer. Bottomland soil is ideal, and it puts up with spring floods, but any deep soil will do. It becomes a huge, wide-crowned tree, so keep it 40 feet from the house, other trees and power lines.

Saplings ship bare-root or potted. Plant a sapling while dormant, from leaf drop until buds swell. Pecan sends down a long taproot in its first year, so keep that root straight and unbroken. Dig the hole wider than the roots but no deeper, set the root flare at grade, backfill with the soil you took out, and stake only if wind rocks it. Sow nuts in fall an inch or two deep under hardware cloth, or squirrels will dig every one.

Water weekly through the first summer when rain fails, keep a wide mulch ring off the trunk, and tube the stem against rabbits and deer for three years. Top growth is slow at first while the root goes down.

Pecans set nuts best with a second, unrelated tree nearby, because the male and female flowers on one tree open at different times. Seedling trees bear in roughly ten years.