I have been reading and using all the great firsthand information everyone has written. Thank you! I am planning on starting a small apple and chestnut orchard. What Chestnut varieties or seedling does anyone recommend? What spacing? Zone 6a Kentucky. For apples what Red fleshed varieties taste the best? Has anyone harvested redlove apples?
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I don’t know anything about chestnut. I moved your thread to the General Fruit Growing category where people usually hang out.
Several people know about about nut trees. Let start with @Barkslip.
Hopefully Dax and others will chime in to help you.
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Not a knowledgeable person except one very important point on chestnuts is to grow your trees from seed and not get into grafting of chestnuts. Tom Wahl at Red Fern Farm is possibly the most knowledgeable chestnut grower and farmer of chestnuts in the United States and he’s a close friend. There is no recommendation for grafting because of later on graft incompatibility occurs quite frequently. Therefore you’ve spent a bunch of time on a tree that is useless, will be cut down, and the seedling was the right choice, initially. Tom sells seed and knows what strains are to be grown anywhere in the United States. He’s easy to contact thru his website.
Best,
Dax
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If you’re going to grow chestnuts in Kentucky, plant seedlings of Chinese or Chinese hybrid trees. Poorer quality trees can always be grafted to your better seedlings. Red Fern Farm sells high quality seedlings most years. Any seedling they sell is worth planting:
http://www.redfernfarm.com/index.php/product-category/chestnuts/
The University of Missouri HARC program sells seednuts from their cultivar collection, which is very good. The deadline for ordering seednuts this year is September 1, so jump on it if you are interested:
https://missouri.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6nz0GE1xk18zirX
Empire Chestnuts/Route 9 Coop in Ohio sells good quality seednuts as well:
https://store.route9cooperative.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=1855
Whatever you do, don’t be lured into buying Dunstan seedlings. They are average chestnuts being sold at above average prices.
I think both Missouri and Route 9 have Yixian Large nuts. They have excellent flavor and very large size:
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Thank you Castanea you not only helped me get better varieties but saved me money from buying grafted trees. Higher quality lower price is rare.
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I’ve been carrying one genuine American chestnut in my coat pocket nearly a year…from nearby Jackson County, KY.
What are you going to do with it?
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It is are fairly common to find small bearing trees. They just don’t live long enough to become timber trees. The nuts are sweet , but I have had Chinese that were just about as good but much larger.
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I understand, my mom has a Chinese in the front yard…my sister planted it about 40 years ago…has small crops of pretty good sized nuts.
I’ve had Chinese nuts that are much better than Americans, and of course larger too.
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How are your chestnut seedlings doing now?
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Small still not bearing nuts.
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Apples are doing better.
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Where did you source trees? I grabbed some Resilience seedlings this year from Canopy (Red Fern). I’m hopeful they’ll make some very reliable crops.
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I am sorry to hear that. 
I just ordered seedlings from Route 9, I hope they do well for me.
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I ordered from route 9 as well. Looking to get scions and graft.
I am not grafting, I just ordered Chinese seedlings and hope they have good nuts and like my climate.
I highly recommend taking a step back and considering waiting for the seedlings to produce a few years to see what quality you end up with if you have good genetics. If Dax recommended it, there’s a very good reason. He has 10,000+ grafts under his belt, so when he says to avoid grafting I listen.
That said, I plan to graft the worst quality trees from my planting.
I’m not planning a large scale chestnut orchard, more a strategy for self reliance and posterity currently. If chestnut flour ends up being amazing I may go all in and get more trees.
Did you choose Chinese seedlings?
From what I’ve read, it sounds like seedlings have a fantastic chance of the nuts being maybe great but at the very least good, when it comes to Chinese seedlings from good cultivars.