Pine Nuts

I started four varieties of pine nut trees from seed in 2011 for myself and several friends who were interested in growing them. We originally ordered a bunch of small trees from an outfit in Canada. But, after a long journey they all died (the trees, not my friends). So I found seeds and germinated some of all four varieties. They are the Korean Pine (Pinus koraiensis), Siberian Pine (Pinus sibirica), Swiss Stone Pine (Pinus cembra) and Dwarf Siberian Pine (Pinus pumila). There are links below to the Wikipedia pages for all these varieties.

They were started in 2011, and some of the Siberian Pines are now about chest high!! The others are having a harder time of it. They have now survived 8 years (including Alaska winters) in the soil with total neglect (my kind of plant!). The Siberian pines are growing fairly rapidly now, and the tops will be above the snow during winter. The optimistic view is they start producing cones when about 5-10 years old, but that is now, and I am not rolling in pine nuts from my 36" tall pines. Not so much as a single cone or nut yet! Possibly my grand children will get some! They need to be transplanted, so that is the next hurdle they have to survive. Such is experimentation.

Pine trees have both male and female flowers so can pollinate themselves. The Korean pine is the main variety of pine nut sold in local stores, and produces the largest nuts of these trees. Siberian and Swiss Stone pines produce the next largest nut and Dwarf Siberian the smallest nut. With the exception of the Dwarf Siberian, they get to be huge trees, up to 150' tall and 5-6' in diameter and can live for up to 850 years. The Dwarf Siberian may make a good hedge or visual screen as it only grows to about 10 feet in height, which would also be much easier to harvest cones from.

Korean Pine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_pine

Siberian Pine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Pine

Swiss Stone Pine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_stone_pine

Dwarf Siberian Pine - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_pumila