Rachel Stasieluk has two large walnut trees in her backyard in Overland Park. The trees are taller and older than the two-story house where she and her husband and two small boys live. She says the walnut trees and hedge apples along the property were probably once the fencerow on a farm.</p><p>&ldquo;They give great shade. That&rsquo;s why we live here, because we love the big trees,&rdquo; Stasieluk says. </p><p>And except in some years of unpredictable weather, the walnuts fall.</p><p>With the tight economy and a swell of interest in local foods, it seems an abundance of walnuts would be a boon, but Stasieluk has never been sure what to do.</p><p>&ldquo;The squirrels get the walnuts before we do &mdash; they&rsquo;re very happy in the wintertime. They bury them, and our backyard is bumpy; you can&rsquo;t go barefoot.&rdquo;</p><p>Though aggravating, she admits that the squirrel show can be pretty amusing. &ldquo;The kids have fun. Our kitchen table is right there by our deck.&rdquo; And she thinks it might be fun for them to try to harvest a few.</p><p>Larry Ryan, president of Ryan Lawn and Tree, who also has a degree in forestry, says the black walnut is most common edible-nut tree found in the Kansas City area. &ldquo;The only other is the pecan, which is a type of hickory,&rdquo; he says.</p><p>Walnuts drop to the ground with the pulpy green or brown-black hull still on, he says. Some people line the nuts up and drive over them to pop the nut free from the hull. Rinsing removes the excess. </p><p>Pecans are simpler, Ryan says. &ldquo;The husk just pops open.&rdquo;</p><p>As for eating what falls, &ldquo;Walnuts are wonderful in fudge and banana nut bread.&rdquo; Still, he says, &ldquo;The black walnut has fallen out of favor. It&rsquo;s a difficult fruit to extract. It takes a hammer.&rdquo; </p><p>Other methods employ a specially made black walnut sheller &mdash; there are various types online &mdash; or mechanical vices. &ldquo;I spent hours as a child cracking them on the pavement. My mother wanted them for cooking, and we ate as many as we gave to her. But people don&rsquo;t as much anymore.&rdquo;</p><p>For this prime harvest season, Ryan gives advice to those who want to take up the old ways. &ldquo;When they&rsquo;re ripe they&rsquo;ll fall from the tree. There&rsquo;s a reason they call it &lsquo;fall,&rsquo; isn&rsquo;t there? You&rsquo;ll race the squirrels for them.&rdquo;</p><p>The method: Peel the hull off, and use a hammer and tap it. &ldquo;Firm enough to crack it but not hard enough to smash it.&rdquo; He says commercial tools are available to help pry the nut loose, but fingernails will do the trick.</p><p>&ldquo;Black walnuts are great shade trees as long as you don&rsquo;t mind things that fall,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;When you hear people say negative things, it&rsquo;s usually because of where the trees are placed, but that&rsquo;s true of most landscape plants.&rdquo; </p><p>Fast-growing trees, they can be 65 feet or taller, so avoid planting them too close to the house or power lines. Pests are almost never a problem, Ryan says, but people do complain about trying to find plants to grow underneath walnut trees. </p><p>&ldquo;The trees have a natural pre-emergent herbicide called juglone that slows the growth of other plants. You can grow grass under them, to a point, but you need sunlight.&rdquo; Some plants that do well under trees include ferns, English ivy, vinca, euonymus, astilbes and hostas.</p><p>As for pruning practices, Ryan says, &ldquo;You look for weak limbs and poor branches and remove those while they&rsquo;re young.&rdquo; And when they get large, call the professionals.</p><p><hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">WHAT ABOUT CHESTNUTS? </span></strong><br /> Michele Warmund, a tree specialist with the University of Missouri Extension, has an 800-acre farm with chestnut trees, a species that&rsquo;s making a comeback after a decimating blight in the mid-1900s. But she doesn&rsquo;t recommend the trees for city growers. </p><p>&ldquo;People come out to our chestnut groves, and they&rsquo;re really excited to buy them. But they have horrible, spiny burrs on them, worse than a sweet gum tree. You don&rsquo;t want those in your yard if you have children.&rdquo;</p><p></div> <hr class="infobox-hr-separator" /> <div class="infobox"> <strong><span class="infobox-head">ON THE WEB </span></strong><br /> Want to learn more about selecting, storing, preserving and preparing nuts from your trees? </p><p>Visit the University of Missouri Extension Web site: missourifamilies.org/features/nutritionarticles/harvesttohealth/nuts.htm.</p><p></div>