Pecan
Carya illinoinensis
Hardy to -20°C and enormous with it — the zinc spray at budbreak counts for as much as the water.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green · Gold and chartreuse
- Sunlight
- Full sun, and not less than eight hours of it.
- Watering
- Deep, infrequent watering, with real irrigation while the nuts fill.
- Feeding
- Balanced nitrogen in spring, plus a zinc foliar spray at budbreak.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Prune in late winter, while it is fully dormant.
- Overwintering
- Hardy to -20°C; give it a warm site in northern gardens.
- Apr–May Bud Break
- May–Jun Flowering
- Jun–Oct Fruit Set
- Oct–Nov Harvest
- Nov–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Apr Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 39 ft 4 in
- In-row spacing
- 39 ft 4 in
- Between rows
- 49 ft 3 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, with a taproot it keeps
- Working depth
- 3–6.5 ft
- Can reach
- 13 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 49–82 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
It anchors downwards as well as sideways, which is what lets it stand in a gale and what makes it hate being moved. Plant it small: past a few years in the ground a taprooted tree transplants badly, and often not at all.
A seedling pecan puts down a taproot deeper than the seedling is tall in its first season, which is why they are grown in long tree tubes and planted out young. It is also why an established pecan is not moved.
Figures recorded for Pecan itself. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Vine weevil Pecan weevil
- Birds Squirrels and crows taking the nuts
- Scab Pecan scab
- Zinc deficiency, which shows as rosetted growth
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Beneficial nematodes Steinernema & Heterorhabditis spp.Hunts Vine weevil
Microscopic worms watered onto damp soil that hunt down soil-dwelling grubs and release a bacterium that kills them within days. Timing is the whole thing: warm, damp soil and a small target grub, which means late summer for most of what they are used against.
- Frogs & toads AnuraHunts Vine weevil
A resident toad works the beds every night for slugs, cutworms, and weevils. Recruit them with water — even a sunken basin pond — plus damp shade and an upturned-pot toad house; skip the slug pellets that poison their prey.
- Ground beetle CarabidaeHunts Vine weevil
Fast, glossy night hunters that patrol the soil surface for slugs, cutworms, and root-fly larvae. Give them daytime cover — thick perennial edges, stepping stones, a log — and skip the tillage that wrecks their burrows.
- Hedgehog Erinaceus europaeusHunts Vine weevil
A European animal, and worth saying so plainly: there are no hedgehogs in North America, and the ally that does the same night shift here is the toad, the opossum or the ground beetle. Where they do occur, cut a gap in the fence and skip the pellets.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com