You certainly have asked many questions. I will attempt to answer what I can. Depending on where you live, Chinese chestnuts may or may not thrive. If you spoke to Route9 people, I expect they would have steered you towards other lineage if Chinese weren’t a good choice. I have grown Chinese seeds from good cultivars and can’t tell the difference between the seedling nuts and the cultivar nuts. Experts say that the Chinese seedling is pretty similar to the parent most of the time and if it is worse it shouldn’t be by a lot. You certainly need to be careful about animals eating your nuts if you grow from seed. Yes, Chinese chestnuts are denser, the experts say that, but I can’t tell the difference and I know they’re supposed to be denser. The cooking process took some trial and error for me. Experts say to cook Chinese nuts at lower temp but longer time to get the best flavor out of them. Good Chinese chestnuts peel lots easier than any store bought Italian nuts that I have ever bought. My Chinese seedlings started producing nuts at 3, 4, 5 years old but keep in mind that the seedling might only produce a couple of burs the first year. At 5-6 years old they delivered a decent crop, just based on my experience. Good luck and hope you have fun with them.
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