Store bought chinese chestnut tree

Hi, I bought two chinese chestnut trees from tsc this spring. They were one ft tall pencil size so I transplanted them in the pots. So far they only grew 2 new leaves and don't look very happy.

I planned on put the trees in ground this fall but now I think I might better off growing a new one from nut. I don't have lots of space left for trees, so I can save the prime spot for the nut grown tree and put these two somewhere else just for pollination purpose.

Any suggestions? Thanks.

What about planting these, plus some from seed? then cull when the winner becomes obvious..

I am not sure if it normally takes so long for a Chinese chestnut to get established? Then a one year old sapling like this won't give me much advantage compared to seed grown ones.

I will start a couple more from nuts this fall as the tree on the right seem to be dying already.

Go ahead and put them in.  They'll do much better in the ground!

Thanks, I guess next week will be a good time to plant them, supposed to rain a lot.

I used to plant bare root trees directly in ground but they both died. I had success with mulberry and fig trees by babying them in pots first till roots started to grow out of drain holes but not pot bound, then transferring them in ground. Don't know why it's not working with chestnut trees this time.

I'd plant them and grow some from seed as well. Give the potted ones a little extra attention for a few weeks after planting and they should do fine.  It looks like there's a lot of grass in the pot on the right. That could be part of the reason why that tree is not growing as well. The grass is competing for the water and nutrients.