This is the time of year when the oak tree drops its acorns. Falling acorns around us can be annoying and certainly unpleasant to pick up.
Collecting acorns and keeping them off your lawn is good yard and garden care. A heavy crop of acorns can damage the grass by suffocating the young leaves under the acorns. Oaks left in the grass for a long time can kill the grass, and if left in the garden, they will turn the garden into an oak nursery.
The acorns left on the ground this year will be next year's crop of trees. Nuts can be buried under a layer of leaves during the winter months or accidentally planted by animals. Acorns are food for animals, especially squirrels. Squirrels will store nuts as a food source during the winter months. Nuts that the animals do not take for winter feed will sprout in the ground and become oaks the following spring.
Getting rid of the garden is all about picking boring acorns. There are several ways to collect nuts.
The most obvious is to simply follow. As simple as it sounds, clearing them can be a challenge because the nuts get stuck between the thin branches of the rake and you have to go over the same area several times to collect a small amount of nuts. Cut acorns are piled up, collected with a flat shovel, such as a snow shovel, and then sent to a container for disposal. This strategy provides a good cardio workout.
Gardening, a workshop or a washing machine can clean oaks, but a vacuum cleaner does not separate oaks from grass, leaves and dirt and therefore absorbs everything in its path. This may or may not be desirable. Acorns damage equipment and the collected debris is likely to be quite dusty.
A simple and neat option, which can become a bright and useful New Year's gift, "acorn collector". These devices are marketed as acorn catchers, nut catchers, or basket rollers, but have the same concept of catching the nuts in a metal basket when the device falls on the nuts. A long flexible wire basket or cage is attached to a long handle.
By rolling the device on the ground and separating the flexible wire that passes through the nut, it closes around the nut and collects the nuts in a basket. Small objects, such as bits of dirt or dust, pass through the ground wire. When the basket is full, loosen the threads and the nuts will come out. Acorn pickers are easy to store in a garage or tool shed and take up less space than a rake or shovel.
Wear a red ribbon and make someone happy.
Ellen Pefley taught college horticulture for 28 years, 25 of them in Texas, during which time she bred two varieties of onions. Today, he is the sole owner of "Aigut" farm. You can email him at gardens@suddenlink.net.
This article first appeared in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. Gardening for You. Acorn Pickers for Christmas Gifts.
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