Visit to Burnt Ridge Nursery

I had the good fortune to have a visit to BRN and tour a portion of the orchard and nursery with the owner Michael Dolan. He was generous with his time as I basically just dropped in. Nice hillside site with some views of Mt St Helen. The highlight for me was seeing his collection of grafted chestnut trees, he’s got 70 or so varieties which were dropping some very nice looking nuts. Nursery beds and bearing specimens were interspersed throughout the landscape. We purchased some jams and Asian pears to take with as well as some chestnut seed for planting out. Very fun to see the origin of some plants I’ve been growing in Maine!

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nice! im jealous. :wink: i just grew out 30 dunstan chestnuts from seed that i plan to plant next spring up the mountain. got 4 Chinese chestnut growing up there from 2 springs ago. what cultivar did he recommend you grow ?

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Such respect for Mr.Dolan who clearly is a big asset to the plant community.

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He recommended Japanese and Japanese hybrids chestnuts. He said Chinese varieties did not work for his location due to lack of sufficient summer heat which surprised me

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that is surprising as most Chinese chestnuts are rated more cold hardy than Japanese and euro chestnuts. of course new England and Washington weather are completely different. they get alot more summer heat than we do.

The only thing bad about Burnt Ridge is the giant hill you gotta drive down :sweat_smile: I was just there the other month as well to grab a bunch of blueberry plants.

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