Emailing you! I'd LOVE pecan seedlings :)

I bought some T&M seeds just for the fun of it, and followed the instructions: Pluck off the orange fluff, put in moist sand, and put in absolute darkness in warmth. I had six out of eight seeds germinate, starting about a month afterwards, and going on to about three months. Plumeria gets quite large, up to about ten metres (30ft) or so, if I remember correctly, but can be kept smaller in pots. They take at about four years or so to start flowering, from what I've read. They are easy to germinate, though. I just stuffed the seeds upright, half-buried (just the seed part, not including the wing), into the soil, wing-side up, and they germinated in a few weeks. Be very careful, though, the stems of the seedlings are extremely fragile, I've found. A bit of shear pressure on them, and they snap easily. Pecans, I have no experience with. Palms, I haven't germinated, but I had some seeds someone gave me, and he said you just put it in some moist soil and wait for a couple of weeks, and they'll germinate. Good luck!

Hopefully none of the canopies can be reached from other trees nearby. If this is the case, you at least have a chance to put a dog next to the trees or a trap on the trunks or a barrier of some kind there at the trunks. I can't really give advice because I've not been able to keep them from my little trees. The only have a couple pounds of nuts in each, but they have already cleared the first 4 of all nuts before I could get them, and have started on 5 or 6 more of the later maturing trees.

There are 2 potential answers. 1. Most likely this is an off year for your tree. Pecans are a masting tree (bear fruit irregularly). This is natural and happens in the wild. The purpose of this is that by producing a large crop, the tree makes more seed than the predators can eat (crows, squirells, weevils) so some is left for new trees. The next year there are no nuts and the predators starve and the population lowers. Often all the trees in the forest will be on a similar schedule and one year there are few nuts, the next year plenty. Even good pecan growers struggle with this problem, and it is the focus of much pecan research. 2. The other potential problem is pecan scab. This is a disease that affects the leaf and shucks, producing black velvety spots. If the young nuts are heavily infected they will drop off in the summer. In a wet year this disease can devastate your crop. If you see a lot of catkins on the tree in spring, there were probably female flwers as well and if you then don't have nuts something like scab took the crop. If you don't see catkins then the female flowers were probably never there and it is an off-year for your tree.