**UPDATED** How to Grow a Chestnut Orchard - 10-years of Experience! 

You’ve inspired me to start my own acre plot of chestnuts just to see how they do! 2 years in, thanks for all the great content!

This guy has such great info for us. Glad I'm doing this at 23 years old instead of 40.

This is a damn good overall assessment of growing chestnuts! I too have been planting and growing for 10 plus years. I’ve had all of the same issues you’ve had. Bravo on an excellent presentation!

Right on! I planted 800 trees in 2022 on the Idaho-Canadian border, spaced at 15' rows with 10' spacing between trees. I'm expecting losses, hence the close spacing. Your video is helpful, especially the part about trees galled by the tube tops. Next year, I will have trees exceeding the 6' tubes (we have elk, so 6' tubes were chosen). Our orchard is a test case, and if chestnuts work in the northern-most part of Idaho, we'll have another useful crop. Thanks for the video.

My family owns a farm in New England, and apparently my great grandfather was very involved with helping to fight the Chestnut blight. Watching your videos makes me think we could take a crack at running a chestnut orchard. Should be less annoying than shoveling out cow pens!

Thanks John, I just planted 20 chinese chestnuts here in southern nj, great info. I planted all 20 last weekend, 3/18/24, they're 3'-4' bare roots in 48" miracle tubes in slightly acidic soil.

Thanks John! I appreciate all of your videos that you do. I’ve been following you for about a year. I’ve got about 130 trees planted. I get a lot out of the info that you pass on. Thanks!

Spring is coming. I am about to plant 130 trees next spring. Additional 200 walnuts.

Great video and thank you for the knowledge you have shared. I have planted over 40 trees and add more every year in not so perfect soil. It's 5years in now and it seems to be going well.

Thanks for the info. We are about 7 years behind you and in N IL. Keep on growin

Great video John! Been following you for years and the orchard is looking awesome. All that hard work is paying off

very honest and accurate description, challenges and rewards, always a learning process!

Thanks John hope to see the next 10 years growth

Great video John , You have been a wealth of information to me . 2nd year in for me and Im very satisfied with our progress . Starting some more seed this winter to replace next years stinkers ! Thank you again for teaching us !

Outstanding video, very informative

Thanks, John. Good information and expectations ... 👍

Thanks for all the information. I’m Considering planting a small 3 acre orchard. Your videos have been informative. I’m getting the soil tested next week.

Really interesting . 3 trees going into year 5 this summer !! Hoping for chestnuts 🌰 finally this summer

Thanks for the info. It's all good. I am stratifying 20 seeds now and hope to have a tap root in Jan or Feb. Just trying to grow some for my own consumption as I think they taste nice and have good nutritional value. They also attract deer and since we hunt on this property as well it is a win win situation. If all goes well. Good luck with your bumper crop next year and hope you will find lotsa buyers.

I literally 1) almost moved up to Erie (Corry area) *this* month and 2) am a TACF member and plan on owning a chestnut farm AND 3) my name is John!!!! I feel like I am watching what I could have been if I wasn't stuck in Philly lol

Nice work man!

Nice work John! I agree with what you said re spacing, diversity, and mortality. I have found that if spring planting watering and some kind of weed barrier drastically reduced mortality. I am going to experiment with cages. Tubes have worked great but the trees are weak early on. I think the tubes protect a little too well

Great video!! Thank you for this

Very informative thanks

I am a new subscriber, love chestnuts 👍🙏

Great vid!

Thanks!

Excellent!

well done great job.

Thank you!

excellent, informative video....i just planted 3 fruit tress & want to plant maybe 20 Chestnuts, but have to clear the area of big cedars & red oaks......You say, the best time to plant is early to mid April, I'm in Southern Ohio....& i'd probably plant bare root plants, not from a seedling....bare root is probably easier...& i'll use wire cages as i have a lot of deer around me...thank you !

Interesting video & I agree with you on the wire screens vs tubes. I live in central NYS and as a tree growing novice, I planted 5 American Chestnuts 18 years ago. 2 died within a few years due to , my guess, high pH. A third was rubbed out by a deer around year 8 and other species shaded out its resprouts. The 4th was hit hard by frost around 10 years ago but it resprouted from the ground and grew very fast ( 3 stems now ) because i started giving it some Miracid and or Ammonium Sulfate around May 15th every year. Unfortunately 4 years ago one of the stems which was 20' tall got blight so i cut that one off. Two years ago the next stem, which was a beautiful 25' 6" dbh sapling got blight and i cut it. Now i just noticed the orange bubbles on the remaining stem. Too bad because it is at least 30' tall and 7" dbh. My last tree has produced chestnuts for a few years now which the squirrels get way before they fall. Its around 25' tall and 6" dbh. I am sure its days are numbered however.

Great content John! Hope you are well. Doug W

I am located not far from Columbia, MO where that Agroforestry paper was published. I’m currently year 3 into 3 acres of black walnut. I’m looking to do another 8-10 acres in chestnuts. Great info. I agree with the wire vs tubes as well.

Two questions. 1. What about growing gideons? 2. What about marketing / selling said chestnuts the pain of growing and keeping them alive doesn’t mean much if you can’t market the product? Look forward to your update on that.

Excellent tips, thanks for the video! We are in W NC at ~3500 ft elevation. Have a thriving and productive hazelnut grove. We planted a few chestnuts "colossal" and "silverleaf" (think asian x european cross?). Worried about that note on graft failure. Do you have any experience with these? They seem to be growing OK overall when protected from deer, far from production ready. They do get some browning of the leaf edges, maybe rust? Do you think we should stay on course ? Or switch to a more pure asian variety like the Shing?

Wow, check out how the prevailing winds have bent the trees over at 6:00 ! Will be interesting to see those in another 10 years. I had mostly bad experiences with the corrugated plastic tubes, I no longer use those for anything.

Very good overview. I am planting a range of trees and plan on including some chestnuts here in New Brunswick. Any thoughts about the best soil amendments if the native soil is too alkaline? I find the recommendations on this to be surprising (recommended pH range). Where I grew up in the south of the UK we were on chalk and the soils very alkaline yet there were huge chestnut trees all over the place and they were very healthy.

Good stuff. Yeah, fencing is key. Wish I'd started with 6' 4"x2" held with one 6' rebar. Have 90 species growing here in MN, including a few Dunstans, which are basically shrubs due to die back.

Hiya John great video very interesting and informative not far from my home in the UK their is a chestnut tree on a public cycle route this year I collected some chestnuts to try and plant when they are stratified but they are very small are they worth trying to plant or could something be wrong with the tree causing them not to develop to larger nuts?

Thank you. New to your channel. I have really enjoyed the video. What would be your thoughts of growing wheat or a similar culture in between? How about clover or berries? Thank you for your presentation.

My mortality has mainly been from planting in very wet and shaded places. The higher parts of my property are also the wettest. There is adjacent land that is higher than mine and it took me awhile to understand that the water was moving underground and on the surface. Everything is on a slope. I did accidentally mow my native local chinquapin, but it has grown back. Relative to rabbits, they seem to leave my trees alone and my dogs chase them. I shot two rabbits this summer from the tractor with a .small .38 loaded with shot intended for water moccasins. The deer stay on the other side of the fence and so far no bears or feral hogs have trespassed that is likely because of the dogs. We are warm enough in NW FL zone 8b for asian persimmons and several trees with fruit are being decimated by birds and squirrel that the dogs rarely catch. I also have native local persimmons and also grafted american persimmon. All of asian persimmons were grafted to local rootstock. I do not have a cat any more after little guy did it in. Little guy is not little as when he was a puppy He never liked the cat but he will not chase a deer. He is traditional southern farm dog that were called white english and are being replaced by american bulldogs and foreign LGD. So they are not pure with each region or family with their own strain and he is a mixture of several strains. Long oversize mastiff head, but a long thin big boned body. He is sleeping at my feet; in an hour I will put him and his mother miss piggy out to guard the property and keep the third dog that has injuries inside tonight. My current adult three dunstans and unknown chinese like the soil where they are located and that area seems not to be water logged. We get about 60 inches of rain here.

Thank YOU John for sharing such good information, is it posible to raise pigs and feed them with the chestnut pods ???????? As they do in Spain with the black pig but with another pod ?????? I appreciatte

John i have seen many of your videos. Here in Wisconsin we have acidic soils in the north. More alkaline soils near Lake Michigan. Have you ever considered 8 ft spacing to grow chestnut poles. Far preferable to treated lumber. A nutty idea on my part. Bad pun. Thankyou John

Do you think #3 or 3/8 inch rebar is strong enough for staking the metal mesh cages?

Thanks for this. Question though, if one of the benefits of tubes is to keep the tree from branching out, I assume you lose that benefit when you use cages and have to prune young trees to a single stem?

May I sign up for some trees or even just nuts this fall? I’ve enjoyed chestnuts when overseas then when I learned they’d almost all died off but are now making a comeback I decided to grow as many as I can. I can’t even find local chestnuts at all around here! I bought about 15 Dunstan trees at $15-35 each plus some Chinese seeds (from Long Island) I may be sprouting in the fridge. Some have sprouted so we shall see! I’d prefer to grow Dunstan if I can but any growing base is fine with me!

In your experience, how would these trees do in northern lower MI ? The soil is perfect, I’m just concerned with cold/snow. Thank you!

Have any idea how a crop of chestnuts would do in upstate NY? I don't see a lot of them ever around my area..

Do u use rot resistant stakes? If so what r they? Thx

What gauge wire? Any recommendations on what to search for at my store?

John, thank you for this excellent and informative video. I am looking to buy some bare root trees this winter (by mail order). Primarily Chinese varieties since I just want them for eating by ourselves. Can you give us the some names of sellers you have done business with? Stefan

Hi John, I am in SE Ohio and I have an orchard 36 very healthy 12 year old chinese chestnut trees. The nut crop has been very sparse the last two years. I prune a little, I do not spray or fertilize or lime. Should I fertilize? Should I spray? I do keep the ground clear under the tree out a little past the drip edge. The male catkins have been very plentiful, however, I've notice dthe small female burr's have been sparse. Any advice is appreciated. PS 3 yrs ago the trees produced very well???

Where can i get these different strains of chestnuts? Do you sell them? Im not looking for a whole farm, but four of each variety would be great!

I’m thinking about starting a 5 acre orchard with American hyrbrids I’m in the mountains of NC, you see things about making up to $35,000 a year per acre but I was wondering what the realistic profit is through the years of growth per acre?

Would you fence the 25 acres or each tree?

Id be happy to purchase some chestnuts from you in the next few years if you get the amounts to do so.

Just planted 80 bitazac 8 marval Good luck

Where is your Grove-Orchard located?

Nice information, BUT..! You did not mention anything about grafting or diseases. I live in Europe, Greece, with a long history of chestnuts and the problems of diseases .. After the grows to a certain height, it must be grafted or else the nut will taste bitter. I realize that the ones that are purchased from the nurseries. are grafted but the ones you grow from a nut are nut the same ... Or have you discovered something around the grafting of these home-grown siblings?? I enjoyed your video and was hoping to pick up some new information...

Keeping grass and weeds away around the trees, especially in the early years, will make trees grow better. Spreading new roots goes difficult between grass roots. The bigger the circle without grass, the better trees grow. Once tree roots have spread far out grass is less of a problem.

It's sad to think that billions of American Chestnuts were lost to mistakenly-imported parasitic fungus. It's also sad to consider the fallout, direct and indirect. I'm happy to see the efforts of many people to reestablish the American Chestnut. I hope it makes a comeback in a big way.

Where do suggest getting the seedlings from?

I’m on year five I have lost 5 out of 40 dunstan , I got them on sale root bound trees I have a few that are 20’ pluse

You can plant them at 30 ‘ and on third year transplant every other tree

Now you need you a few hives there to pollinate and collect very high prized honey.

Hi John, do you have a way I can contact you? I live close to you in Guys Mills and was hoping I could get some seeds or seedlings from you.

John , I'mm inspired as well, can I buy chestnuts from you? When is the best time to purchase the chestnuts if I want to stratify over the winter 2024, to plant in spring 2025? Unfortunately, I'm not of facebook

Hi can it buy some american chesnut saplings off you ?

How are the chemtrails affecting your trees with the excess aluminum and barium?

Life long gardener/volunteer.....running joke....I get this question all the time, "When is the best time to plant a fruit tree?" My response is always - 10 years ago. 😅

Dont forget racaoons who will tear into your tubes to get the wasp larvea

Thanks!