Dud To Nut Ratio

In an effort to thwart those nut thieves, I have been picking some of the filberts right off the trees rather than wait for them to dry the husks and fall to the ground naturally.

I have been finding a disturbing rate of unfilled, dud nuts in the gatherings.

Husks that hold two, three or up to seven filberts may only have one or two viable nuts inside.

The brown nuts are filled out and plump while the immature white or light green nuts are duds. Many of the filled out shells are misshapen, deformed and on the small side for filberts, but with the trees in such poor shape, I try to harvest all I can.