Ahh, cracking. The next phase. Often fraught with frustration - but it doesn't have to be. I did forget one point on the husk removal - after you've gotten the bulk of the husk material off manually(and stained your fingers/hands), you really need to wash them to get as much of the remaining husk off as is possible. The big boys just pitch 'em in a cement mixer with some rough rocks or chunks of broken bricks - and I've got a friend who used an old clothes dryer - with the heating element removed - to roll 'em around for a while with water & rocks/bricks to get them almost squeaky clean. I don't have either, so I just put 'em in a 5-gallon bucket, fill it with water, and stir vigorously with a stick, pouring off the black water and adding more, until it comes off fairly clean. After the BWs have cured for a couple of weeks or more, then it's time for a session of cracking. A good heavy duty hard-shell nutcracker(not one designed for cracking pecans) is really helpful, but a bench-mounted vise is quite serviceable. Here's my main tip for BWs and hickory nuts - soak them in a pan/pot of warm water for an hour or two before you begin a session of cracking. The shells will absorb enough moisture that they will bend, buckle, and split, rather than explode into pieces when you reach 'critical pressure'. With a vise or nut cracker, a pair of diagonal wire-cutting pliers(for making a snip here and there in the nutshell to release nutmeats) and a nut pick, I can usually extract intact halves/quarters from the most inhospitable walnut or shellbark/shagbark hickory. A vote for the 'improved' nut varieties with thinner shells and open central cavities is in order. Emma Kay, Clermont, Thomas Myers, Neel #1, etc. are primo black walnuts, with thin shells and kernel % 2-4 times greater than the typical wild-type BW. Hickories - I'm still waiting for mine to bear, but I've had occasion to sample a few named varieties, and I have a local shagbark selection that won 1st place at the KY State Fair several years back. J.Yoder #1 and Grainger are probably two of the top shagbarks. Fred Blankenship's KY discovery, 'Simpson #1', may be the best shellbark to come down the pike.

nut shells don't really decompose, and will look exactly the same next year as when ya put them in, and I can't imagine cloth would contribute much, even precomposted, though if it was well shredded it might be useable as part of the bedding .... if you don't have much better things to feed in quantity you're gonna have some unhappy worms, lookin for the train outta town what worms eat is the microbes that cause decomposition of organics, the largest population of those decomposers will happen fastest on sugary, starchy foods, things that you would eat, if it wasn't spoiled or scrap, and things that contain high moisture levels .... most of what we eat is 85% water Bill

kimmsr, thanks for taking the time to reply. The soil is very compacted but honestly not wet. There's no water source (lake, creek, pond, etc..) nearby, and as far as I'm aware hasn't been watered regularly in 3 or more years. I planted a few trees in the area and have kept them watered, but not the whole area because I was planning on re-seeding later anyway. It is on a slight slope and since the water seems to run off fairly easily I put them on a drip hose and watered deeply for several hours a couple of times a week. After watering, the ground around the trees did not appear to be wet; on the contrary it was so hard and compacted I had a difficult time in places even getting a shovel in it to dig up the weeds. I would love to be able to identify and stop the conditions which favor the growth of this stuff. Not sure if it matters, but the variety of nutsedge growing is purple. It's very warm in the summers here in north Texas... I can't do much about that unfortunately. The soil is compacted (not sure if that's a contributing factor or not), but I do plan on areating to give the grass roots a better chance of grabbing hold of something. And as I said, the soil is not wet. Is there anything else I need to be aware of? Thanks again!

Sure, just drill a hole in the end of the red. :) NO, don't do that. I'm just kidding. Yes, you can use the reds, just don't over load them, you can typically go with 4-5 #12's in a red. You would just pigtail all the circuit grounds and add one for each device in the box. Also one for a metal box if that's what you have.