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Post by cspot on Aug 17, 2015 17:44:26 GMT -5
Planted these in late winter/early spring. I should have taken a pic when I planted, but they have all grown nicely and have added alot of new growth. I planted 5 trees and am very happy with them. They are supposed to get about the size of a crabapple tree and produce a bunch of small chestnuts. www.empirechestnut.com/catalog.htm |
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Post by Dutch on Aug 17, 2015 18:42:02 GMT -5
I planted Chinese Chestnuts years back. They seem to get hammered by the freezes upstate. They are leafing out to early.
A couple seem to now be taking off, but I expect once they get a nut on them, the bears will destroy the trees.
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Post by bushmaster on Aug 17, 2015 18:51:27 GMT -5
Nice tree! I was checking on mine over the weekend. Put them in 5 years ago. My Saw tooth's are about 9' and a few have acorns. My Hazelnuts are covered with nuts for the first time. It's a lot of fun keeping tabs on there progress. My biggest threat are bucks rubbing the bark off, I have corrugated pipe on them as protectors.
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Post by cspot on Aug 17, 2015 18:53:35 GMT -5
I just wish Bushy that I would have planted trees 15 years ago when I got the property instead of waiting until now. They would be producing great by now. Instead I will be waiting 5 years before they produce anything.
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Post by Dutch on Aug 17, 2015 18:58:15 GMT -5
Consider, for next year, putting some Miracle Gro in when you water them.
Also, some fertilizer spikes may be good, once they are older.
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Post by acorn20 on Aug 18, 2015 19:16:52 GMT -5
Best of luck with your chestnut trees.
A couple of years ago I picked up a few chestnuts on South Mountain during fall turkey season. The ground was littered with them. Our local NWTF Chapter met with the Michaux State Foresters, PGC, biologists and other local chapters and discuss future habitat projects for turkeys and the hunting seasons as they apply to WMU 5A. After the meeting, I showed the chestnuts to the district forester and he didn't just want to know the area I found them, he wanted to know EXACTLY where I found them.
The forester called the nuts Castenea Pumila known as the Allegheny chinquapin, (pronounced Chink-o-pin) American chinquapin or dwarf chestnut. It's a species of chestnut native to the Eastern US from South PA to Central Florida. The plant's habitat is dry shady and rocky uplands (where I found them) and ridges mixed with oak and hickory trees. The trees grow best in full sun or partial shade.
I put the nuts in our freezer until the next spring. Once out of the freezer, I kept these nuts moist until they sprouted and planted them in starter pots. After a couple of months I transplanted about ten of these on my property in Bedford County. I had the same type fence around them as you show in the picture. They were doing fine until the damned squirrels or skunks burrowed under the fence, which I had planted a couple inches deep with the hopes of deterring exactly this, and helped themselves to the remainder of the nut from which the tree sprouted. Additionally, a couple of the trees were nipped by deer.
The foresters are extremely interested in getting nuts and starting saplings from either trees in the forest or from their nursery upstate which is starting to plant chinquapins for transplanting. The trees provide great forage for turkeys and apparently deer.
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Post by davet on Aug 18, 2015 19:45:59 GMT -5
The local population of deer....and the one sneaky groundhog that I haven't seem to have said "hello" to, are feasting on my two crabapple trees that are now in the process of dropping. Just about every morning and every evening "mama" and her two twins are coming by. I also have another "mama" and triplets, but they must have found some other sources of apples to get fat on. I haven't seen them in about 3 weeks.
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