2017 chestnut crop

Katie, Redfern has good nuts for 4b. I am in 4b S of Madison WI. I have a 25 yr old orchard with a mix of everything I could get then. Skookum, Layeroka, Skioka, Rutter and Redfern hybrid mixes and others over the years They took forever to get into production but they are getting better every year. More pollen? I eat many of them fresh after a short cure as the flavor is sweeter than roasted ones I have had in Europe and Asia. I am starting the best seedlings every year and I am planning on grafting my best producers onto the older seedlings this year. Any advice on the pros on this? I’d also like to try some of the very large sweet nuts; Colossal is reputed to survive -28F-any others you would try?

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That is so encouraging, thank you for your reply. I am more excited all the time to visit red fern farm.

I saw a couple on their site that I would like to get, but they don’t ship the potted ones. Maybe we can get down there this summer when we are out and about.

Hello!! I live in Nebraska and “restarted” an effort to establish a Chestnut Orchard on my 23 acres. I first tried it in the mid 90’s, buying up to 100 American Chestnuts over the span of about 4 years from the American Chestnut Council out of Cadillac Michigan. And then I ended up giving up because almost all of them died, for a variety of reasons. Well, not all of them died. 3 survived from the 90’s, with one now over 30 feet tall and all producing burrs. But the burrs are all blanks because the 3 surviving trees are as far apart as you could possibly make them on my property. They are all probably 300 yards at least from each other. So in 2016, I decided to give Chestnuts another try, and I made a big purchase last year of 58 various varieties, almost all of which survived our severe winter. Anyway, my reading up on Chestnuts led me across this discussion. And from this discussion I learned about Paragon Chestnuts from 1900, along with the mystery question; Did any of them survive? Well, guess what? I tracked down the Old William Caha Homestead outside of Wahoo Nebraska (about 40 minutes from my house) back in February, explored it after the snow melted in early April, and found 2 surviving Chestnut trees.  They had blight, and had gone through several iterations of grow-backs from the base. They’ve probably had the blight since the 70’s at least, but they’ve been regrowing. Lot’s of burrs, but 98% of them were blanks. I found all of 1 filled out nut, which was very good sized and would easily cover a quarter. (Stuck it in the fridge with potting soil to get it to root, but no luck. It had froze.) There were a few more burrs that may have had a filled nut in them, but the nut was gone. I also took some cuttings from both trees, and with them I made my first ever attempts at grafting. I used as root stock some of the Euro-Japanese whips I received this spring. I was 0 for 22 on cleft grafts. (I’m working with seedlings the size of a pencil and scion bud branches the size of a Bic pen refill.) I gave 1 last try with a graft low on the whip. (I learned after the fact that this is called a side veneer graft) And lo and behold, one of them took!! So I have a growing shoot from “Caha #1” and I went out last weekend and got some more “barely budding” scions from “Caha #2”. I gave one last shot at grafting with them, and hopefully at least one of them will take. I’ll go back there in the Fall to see if I can find some filled out nuts to get to sprout for Spring of 2020.

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Hello!! I live in Nebraska and “restarted” an effort to establish a Chestnut Orchard on my 23 acres.It turns out I live near the old Orchard where a “Paragon” Chestnut might still exist. So I went out to it late this winter and found 2 surviving chestnuts!  They had blight, and had gone through several iterations of grow-backs from the base. They’ve probably had the blight since the 70’s at least, but they’ve been regrowing. Lot’s of burrs, but 98% of them were blanks. I found all of 1 filled out nut, which was very good sized and would easily cover a quarter. (Stuck it in the fridge with potting soil to get it to root, but no luck. It had froze.) There were a few more burrs that may have had a filled nut in them, but the nut was gone. I also took some cuttings from both trees, and with them I made my first ever attempts at grafting. I used as root stock some of the Euro-Japanese whips I received this spring. I was 0 for 22 on cleft grafts. (I’m working with seedlings the size of a pencil and scion bud branches the size of a Bic pen refill.) I gave 1 last try with a graft low on the whip. (I learned after the fact that this is called a side veneer graft) And lo and behold, one of them took!! So I have a growing shoot from “Caha #1” and I went out last weekend and got some more “barely budding” scions from “Caha #2”. I gave one last shot at grafting with them, and hopefully at least one of them will take. I’ll go back there in the Fall to see if I can find some filled out nuts to get to sprout for Spring of 2020. I have more detail in my response to “Matt in Maryland”. The discussion board doesn’t let me post 2 copies of the same response.

Good detective work!

Greg Miler of Empire Chestnuts in Ohio found and identified one of those Nebraska trees as Paragon many years ago. I also found a probable Paragon tree in an old cultivar orchard in Brownsville California about 20 years ago. The Felix Gillet Foundation has been selling that Paragon tree as an American tree for the last few years. The botanical gardens in Melbourne Australia also have a Paragon tree. Allegedly someone in Canada also has an old one. Below is a photo of the Melbourne tree and a photo of nuts from my Paragon graft from Brownsville.


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That’s about the size of the one nut I found…

I posted photos of what I found on the Facebook “Chestnut” page, if you’re on that.

Why do you think no nut pollination is occurring? The two trees are no more than 80 feet apart. There are years of accumulated burrs on the ground, all filled with shriveled, unfertilized nuts.

Any random two trees may not be in sync time-wise to pollenize each other.

Were you able to get this to work? I saw some cultivars from Portugal that may be helpful in the last American Chestnut Society meeting I can send.

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Pollen sterile trees possibly.

I haven’t yet, but any possible candidate cultivar is appreciated!

Do you know of any data on the productivity of Ness? Where did it derive from? Thanks

No data on productivity. It’s a Chinese tree from California.

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