i do not have an answer to your question, but i do have a question for you. i am in northwestern il. just south of monroe wi. i have a 3 acre dairy pasture that i am working to naturalize and someone gave me some walnuts to plant. i'm wondering if you easily get seedlings sprouting from the dropped walnuts. if not i'll search for more info to get them to germinate but perhaps just "stepping" them into the ground will get me seedlings for next summer. i can tell you that we were hit with the drought also and many of our 4 to 5 yr old trees were stressed and are coloring and dropping leaves early this year. perhaps the area was dryer or sunnier in the heat this summer and caused the trees in back not to set nuts?