[MODS I think there should be a factual answer to my questionm but if appropriate please move to IMHO. Thanks!]
I have a small but apparently mature Valley Oak tree adjacent to my front lawn. I have lived here for two growing seasons and have never had an issue with acorns. Apparently due to weather factors in California, coupled perhaps with the age of the tree, this year has been a bumper crop for acorns and my yard and driveway are usually littered with them. So much so that I have to rake up and sweep up hundreds each weekend. And the tree is still filled with them! :eek:
My concern is that acorns have fallen onto my lawn and worked there way down to the ground. If I get on my hands and knees I can feel them “under” the grass, and I have spent hours picking out the ones I could find. I assume that ignoring the problem will lead to lawn issues in the Spring. I suppose the acrorns might just rot due to the moisture in the lawn, but that might not be healthy for the lawn either. :rolleyes:
So should I not worry about these darn things or continue to spend hours picking them out of the lawn?
You might be able to rake them out with a pring-tine rake, with the tines set close together, but I wouldn’t worry about it - if any survive the winter and germinate, the mower will eradicate them.
I wish I could get more squirrels in the neighborhood! Is there anything one can do with these acorns, besides throw them away? I don’t need any more oak trees on my property…
They’re edible roasted and local Indians definitely included them in their diet, though I don’t know how they rate on the tastyness scale vis-a-vis other oaks. I had a HUGE live oak in my backyard at one time ( biggest in the city I was living in ) that produced so many acorns every year, that when they started coming down on a windy day it almost sounded like machinegun fire. Unfortunately 70-80% of mine had wee oak weevil larvae in them at maturity, so I never tried a taste test.
It’s a smaller tree? I believe Valley Oaks take a good long time to mature. Could be just a forerunner of an annual bumper crop from here on out.
We have some gigantic oak trees on our property (200+ years old). I think you are wasting your time. They don’t do much of anything unless your dicate that your lawn feels like a velvet carpet at all times. You don’t have to rake them or anything else. Mowing takes care of the sprouting problem for good in the spring.
They are high in tannin, so unprocessed acorns taste very bitter. Indians crushed them into a meal, then leached out the tannins by washing with cold water until the water ran clear. Further processing yields a flour suitable for baking, or boiling into a soup.
Briefly discussed here . I did this again last fall, collecting about 20 gallons of acorns - it only took an hour or so, given the crazy yields. I’ve converted about half into acorn meal, and the other half are in the basement, waiting.
To process them, I go through and pick out the cracked nuts and those with a hole (evidence of a worm). I then toss a big handful of dried acorns onto a folded up towel on a sturdy surface, then tap them with a rubber mallet just hard enough to crack them up a bit without totally shattering them. The shell flakes off easily if the acorns are dry enough. The meats have a papery covering, like peanuts do, that may or may not come off as easily. About 1 in 7 or 8 are funky or have evidence of insect damage, but they’re easy to keep separate. The dried meats go into a hand mill to get ground to a meal, which is a pale straw color. The meal gets poured into an old pillowcase and the pillowcase goes into a big bucket full of water to soak for a few hours; a couple of water changes later the meal starts getting redder and loses its astringency. I wring as much moisture out as possible, then spread the meal on cookie sheets in a warm oven until fully dry. A quick spin through a coffee grinder at this point will make as fine a flour as you could want. The flour has no gluten, so you have to add wheat flour if you want to make something that will rise. The texture is similar to cornmeal, but it’s not as sweet.
Is it worth the effort? Maybe. The acorn meal doesn’t really taste ‘nutty’ or have a distinctive aroma. I find it worthwhile from an aesthetic standpoint, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to buy a bag of flour at the local Megalomart.