Poor success nut grafting chestnut

General Fruit Growing
#22

I’ve been very successful at growing them from nuts, starting them in the winter under lights using a root pruning container system. I’ve planted hundreds this way. Chestnuts are truer to seed than many trees when it comes to the characteristics I care about. Most of my trees are being planted for wildlife management purposes. My goal is to get trees that drop nuts from very early to very late. Most drop nuts In September but occasionally I have a tree that doesn’t drop until Oct or even Nov. I’d like to be able to clone these trees to increase the number of mid and later dropping trees. Perhaps with several late droppers growing in proximity to one another, the chances of nut grown trees from their nuts will drop later as well.

I’ve had great success grafting apples, persimmons, and other trees. For some reason, my success with grafting my chestnut seedlings has been very poor. I’ve been trying several methods including inverted radicle grafting and the nut grafting method you show above as well as field grafting trees.

I find that when grafting trees in the field, a chestnuts primary response to injury (the graft) is to push new growth from the root system rather than accepting and pushing the graft. I’ve tried several methods for grafting in the field and none has been very successful.

There may also be compatibility issues when grafting between members of the chestnut family.

Part of it is just that I like to experiment with new techniques.

1 Like
#23

If you like to experiment, go for it. It’s fun. Yes, I think you are right about the compatability issues.
It just gets to be a matter of keeping notes on who will graft to who. I suspect there are about a thousand ways to kill a graft too, and if you are like the rest of us, you’ll learn about most of those, grin.
Mass selection works well in trees, like you said, planting nuts from early droppers together and keeping their progeny separate, then nuts from later droppers, isolated from the first patch by closed canopy and distance.
One more thing, trees grown under difficult conditions will be more apt to throw the graft, lose the graft.
Waiting till the tree is well rooted and there has been a good winter will help. Weeding around it will help. Lots of sun exposure for the first year after grafting will help. Starting the seed orchard in a small clearing where you can cut out the growth from below the graft in a timely manner will help. Hooking down a strong branch so you can reach to graft a pollinator will get the scion up higher, which helps. Parafilm breaks down fairly fast, 2 years here, so you will still be able to hook down the branch and remove the tape if any lingers. This gets to be more important if you use black tape instead. Black tape does allow you to draw it good and tight, which can be good in a less than perfect fit.