There are actually 3 Nanjing Special trees, all grown out from the same seed lot. All are siblings.
Here are photos of the nuts. All are small but all have very good flavor. 1 and 2 have very similar flavor. 3 is a bit different.
NS 1 -
University of Missouri HARC has number 1 but it’s still small. They don’t sell nuts or wood until trees are larger. Very few people have 2 or 3. I used to have 3 or 4 grafts of both 2 and 3 but they have all either died or lost their tags. I have dozens of chestnut trees with lost tags.
You can also do a hypocotyle graft on a seedling, and keep the potted tree indoors till the graft is well knitted up. Once you plant it out, the scion may root.
Just paid a visit earlier this week to PCF and Buzz very kindly gave me a grand tour of his plantings (made out with a grafted Qing, a grafted Jenny, a grafted Little Giant, and a Worchester Dwarf - the WD ortet is very dwarf and prolific, so it should be a promising parent for breeding dwarf yard trees). He said that he hadn’t noticed particular dwarfing tendencies with his Little Giant seedlings and noted that its siblings from the same cross were all much bigger trees, so it might not pass on dwarfing particularly well.
He experimented with grafting to Little Giant rootstock and didn’t see dwarfing though the graft is young. He thinks a lot of the dwarfing comes down to precocious and heavy bearing essentially stunting the trees, which also explains the smaller size of Qing trees. He says that he found Hong Kong seedlings (and another parent, Sleeping Giant I think) to make for the best rootstocks, and overall looks for vigorous seedlings for bench grafting rootstocks.
I did see a very beautiful stand of Liu Red seedlings. 90+% were a beautiful dark red (Buzz said all season long) and showed vigorous, fairly uniform growth in the patch. If the adult trees are fairly shapely, I could see this as a replacement for red leaf plums, red leaf beech, or Japanese maple as a yard ornamental. Al Szego dwarf is another one that he’s very keen on, supposed to be very dwarf and prolific.
@castanea - Buzz didn’t have great luck with grafting Emalyn’s Purple this year because he had unusually cold and rainy weather all season, so he thought he only had one weak graft survive (I think it showed maybe 2-3" of growth). But we actually came across a much stronger EP graft (maybe 7" of growth and thicker caliper, would probably be over a foot of growth if the nurse branch was cut earlier) while rummaging through his greenhouse. So hopefully this means he’ll have EP scion and seedling available in a couple years (I think he’s going to have to field graft next year if he doesn’t want to wait 10 years for nuts in Vermont).
The only variety of chestnut we grow here in my village in Greece ! Their local name is ‘voliotika’ from the city near us which is called Volos ! Huge , fantastic taste and kinda resistant to heat !
Hope you like them !!
I am interested in breeding predictably dwarfing seedlines that could work as backyard or even front yard trees. I have a grafted Little Giant, a grafted Worchester Dwarf, and will have some Al Szego Dwarf seeds. I also have a grafted Qing and a grafted King Arthur, both being fairly small trees with good nut qualities. Also some Liu Red seedling seeds that have a high proportion of full season red leaves. That should give me quite a bit of desirable qualities to work with in a couple years. Just need to find some parent (may be F1 or F2) combination that predictably produces small shapely trees with good looking red leaves and tasty medium-large nuts. It’s not that much to ask for.
Having said that, I have some chestnuts stratifying in my fridge to try my hands at nutgrafting this winter because why not.
I don’t see any way that Little Giant will produce only small seedlings. It’s basically just a mollissima/seguin with more than 50% seguin genetics. Many such first generation hybrids will produce smallish trees with qualities of both parents, but some will produce normal sized trees as well. By the time you get to a second generation hybrid seguin seedling, most or all of the dwarfing tendencies will be gone, unless you backcross to a seguin again.
This is ‘Pandora’. It’s a seedling of a mollissima/seguin hybrid crossed with a Luther Burbank tree called Stump Sprout. It doesn’t have any dwarfing tendency at all-
The only small chestnut breeding line I know of other than seguin species are some of the Luther Burbank trees. Some of those still exist on his old farm in Sebastopol, CA. Some of them are very small and will produce seedlings that flower the first growing season.
New member here. Long first post as well.
Been growing for 3 years now. Im smack dab in the middle of Tennessee and am growing a Bouche de betizac graft, Tsukuba grafts, Tsukuba seedlings and a Marron Comballe graft.
On a separate property nestled upon a lone mountain surrounded by rolling hills, i have several dozen Americans (four pure american 3rd gen survivor seedlings, 70 venerable individuals). This is meant to be a genetic mixing ground between the two groups with only seed from the 3rd gens being replanted.
I had read on a conneticut research page that Tsukuba and BdB both had partial resistance to gall, ink, and blight. The idea was to breed those two grafted Crenatas and stack resistance factors while keeping the noted Tsukuba nut shelf life. The BdB/grafted Tsukuba hybrid that did best would then be crossed into a Marron/grafted Tsukuba hybrid to improve flavor and again retain nut storage quality.
The seedling Tsukubas’ mother was flanked by Bell Epine and Silverleaf, but only God would knows the true pollen donor. The seedling Tsukuba nuts are for consumption exclusively.
What is your experience with Bouche and Tsukuba if you have any? I hope that i didnt choose the wrong starters here to mess around with. One Bouche up and died randomly this spring right after leafing. He had thrown pollen strings last year while only 18 inches tall. The Tsukuba group has proven to be very resilient, taking bug and mechanical damage in stride.
Would recommend getting @Fusion_power input on nut trees i think he can be of some help in that region. @tennessean@TNHunter@Tngrower@TN-Apple@blueberry may have some great suggestions of other fruits and nuts they have good experience with there.
Hello , most of them are 60-70 years old and they still make good nuts ! But we also have some younger trees that we grafted with our variety a few years ago !
Always fun to see someone experimenting with sativa and crenata trees in the eastern US but you are facing an uphill battle.
BdB will be damaged or killed by blight sooner or later, if root rot does not get it first. Same for Comballe.
BdB is sativa/crenata and your rootstock might be pure sativa. BdB has been killed by blight in Europe where blight strains are fewer and milder than they are in TN. It has some blight resistance but not enough for the blight strains in Tennessee.
The Tsukuba seedlings are a question mark because of the unknown pollen parents. Are these from Burnt Ridge? If the pollen parents were sativa, they will also have serious issues with blight. If the pollen parents were crenata they should have blight resistance but they may have poor nut quality and likely will not peel well at all.
Your best options for growing hybrids in TN are to grow mollissima hybrids. Szego is sativa/mollissima. It will also be damaged by blight but Szego seedlings with mollissima pollen parents might do very well. Szego nut quality is also much better than BdB.
Mollissima pollen parents will help produce crenata seedlings with peelable nuts.
Chinese nuts store better, and peel better, than sativa and crenata.
I will certainly consider szego and my grandfather’s unknown chinese tree if my crenata patch fails. Grandfather’s tree produced for the first time in its 40 year life in 2022 and there were no known pollen donors around. Just forest and distant neighbors.
These are Burnt Ridge Trees. The buisness owner told me that the pure Tsukuba and BdB should be fine here but i guess I need to set the two Crenata grafts on their own roots to get a better idea of things. Marron is merely to play with as an edibility enhancer.
The business owner grows trees in Washington state. He has no experience growing them in the eastern US nor does he have any experience growing trees in blighted areas.
BdB has VERY LITTLE resistance to blight. Here’s blight trying to kill BdB in Europe:
Tsukuba may do fine for you if it is grafted on pure Japanese stock. The bigger issue is that Tsukuba seedlings will probably have less blight resistance and poor quality nuts.
Can’t tell you anything else about it but @castanea selected it. Bought one myself this fall, hoping my 6B location is sufficiently favorable so the grafting won’t significantly affect vigor or nut size.
Two tricks I have picked up eating my way through my various culinary chestnut orders this year.
I find cooking chestnuts in sealed foil packets at 250 F for 60-90 minutes to work really well. The nuts do not get dried out but the hulls dry sufficiently to release well. Concentrates the sweetness as compared to boiling, while ensuring the nuts do not get burnt or hard.
UofMissouri recommends making a single slash across the nut for best ease of release (as opposed to a cross). I found this mostly works except the raw nut can be slippery to cut and I can end up essentially cutting the nut in half and making it harder to release for eating. What I find to work really well is to make the cut with a Fiskar Softgrip micro tip pruner. (I bought a box of 15 from Costco for $3 each, so they’re everywhere around my house). It’s easy to cut across the hull but not scratch the nutmeat. This technique also kind of works with the ARS needlenose pruner but the Fiskar worked the best. I just empty a 5 lb bag out of the fridge into a big bowl to air out and sweeten for a couple days, then feel each nut for give and slashing/cooking the ones that are ready.
I am planning to stratify and then plant my seed chestnuts using Styrofoam coolers I get for seafood shipments. I figure the coolers would moderate the temperature extremes, prevent drying out and keep out critters (this is in a screened porch). I did this with some tricky perennial/shrub seeds (mostly a lot of primula seeds from Barnhaven, in 20 row propagation flats) last winter and did okay.
Anyone tried this approach with nut seeds?
Wow what a wealth of info! Thanks for sharing these tips! I usually feel overwhelmed by the myriad of recipes for roasted chestnuts.
Could you post some pictures of your method?
How long were you planning on growing them in the coolers?
