Harvest the pines for pine nuts
The plot has pine forest near but these pines are not good for harvest because they have small seeds in their pinecones. But we had planted 3 Pinus pinea (Stone Pine) trees in the plot some years before when I was child and now they grew enough for harvesting. Pinus Pinea trees has been cultivated for its nuts for over 6000 years, and harvested from wild trees for far longer.
This is the first harvesting year for our pines. I didn’t knew how to harvest them because some pinecones was so high. I cut some small branches to make space for the ladder (I don’t know if it’s the right word 
) but it was still difficult to harvest all the pinecones.
So, I had an idea to make a tool for harvesting. It was not something difficult, just an old pole from a push broom with some wire as you can see. With this simple handmade tool the pine harvesting was really very easy.
The pinecones was stinky from resin and it was not so funny process to remove the seeds from them and clean the seeds many times with water. After the cleaning we leave the seeds drying in the sun for some hours.
We don’t smash the seeds yet because I thought that the pine nuts will stay fresh more time with this way. The smashing of the seeds it’s not so easy because you must notice to not break the nuts who are inside. I smash some of them now as you can see in the first photo and they was delicious. We will keep many pine nuts for Christmas recipes. This year we don’t need to buy pine nuts for Christmas!
I use the scientific name for the tree because it’s easier to use this for the readers from other countries. In Greece we call this pine tree “Koukounaria” and we use the word “koukounari” for pinecones and pine nuts.
Tags: harvest, pine nuts, pinecones, pines, Pinus pinea
16 comments in “Harvest the pines for pine nuts”
chaiselongue (Teleri)
How lovely to have your own pine nuts! They look wonderful and the trees do too.
lj
That is the right word, your description is perfect- I can see it in my head! I love pine nuts, I can’t imagine how great they taste freshly harvested! Enjoy
Sylvia (England)
Thank you for telling us about these nuts and the lovely photographs. All very new to me, so often I (and I am sure others) forget to consider where our food grows.
Best wishes Sylvia (England)
easygardener
That is fascinating. I use pine nuts quite often but I had no idea what they looked like before they appeared in the shop.
Mr. McGregor's Daughter
I love using pine nuts too & had no idea from which pine they came nor how to get the seeds. Now I understand why they’re so expensive.
CityGarden
@chaiselongue I feel very happy for my trees. In the area has some pinus pinea only in the beach, I will try to harvest some of them in autumn because now has many people there and I can’t.
@lj thank you for the word. When I write i don’t know some words and I search in dictionary, but some times I am not sure about the words I can found there. I also love pine nuts!
@Sylvia welcome! I am also new for many things in gardening and I know the feeling. If all gardeners write in blogs we can find and learn many things and informations. I feel happy when I found some gardening blogs.
@easygardener I knew how they looked before appeared in the shop because I had the trees many years but I didn’t knew how to make them look like these in supermarket
I will take 1-2 photos when I will smash some seeds (again) with hammer (yes hammer!) because you must see something. Promise!
@Mr. McGregor’s Daughter the seeds from all pines are edible but the pine nuts from other pine species are smaller and not so good for harvesting. Pine nuts are expensive, we use pinenuts only in Christmas for this reason. Now I hope I can use more pine nuts the next years.
Liz
How lucky to be able to harvest your own pine nuts. We certainly couldn’t do that here in Manchester, UK!
CityGarden
@Liz I really don’t know If you can grew this pinus in UK. Here we thought some Pinus varieties easy to grow everywhere but I must search for Pinus Pinea to see where it can grow because I don’t remember now
Lidija
Hello City Garden,
I would love if you could send me some seeds of your Pinus pinea. I can send you some tomato seeds, and pepper seeds too. What kind of tomato you would like: red, yellow, black? I really have lot of tomato seeds. And all of them are heirloom seed.
Greetings from Finland.
Lidija
CityGarden
Hi Lidija!
Yes I can send you some Pinus pinea seeds (I will send you email later today).
Kate
Hi Citygarden,
This looks wonderful! I have some south African Gem squash seeds I could swap. I’d love to get a tree begun so that when I retire I could harvest pine nuts
Thanks
Kate in Cambridge, MA
CityGarden
Hi Kate! yes I can send you some seeds. I will send you email for address
omar
the tool that you used it is very nice but the problem is how you can smash the seeds if you get big amount of the cones…so I think there is a machine for that…can any body tell if there is???
Carol
Just found out that the pine trees on our property have some delicious pine nuts in the cones. Got the nuts out but don’t know how to open them without breaking the nut inside. Can you help us? Thank you, Carol
CityGarden
Carol I break the seeds carefully with a very small hammer.
yukon
Besides the nutritional value, pine nuts have long been used for beads in the native american culture. Maybe you could try just drilling out some of the nuts and making beads!
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