Hybrid Chestnut Seeds in Canada?

I am on the hunt for hybrid chestnut seeds in Canada. I have found a source of American chestnut seeds in NY state, but I am trying to avoid shipping across the border and I am trying to find blight resistant varieties.

Hi not sure if this helps but I have an american chestnut growing here, just 1 tree. Don't know a whole lot about it as it was here when we moved in. Looks as if it was cut mostly down but regrew from the stump. Seems to be doing well and last year was loaded with nuts. This year not as many but still some. You can have some seeds from it if you like? If so just pay for shipping and you have have the seeds for free when they are ready in the fall.

That would be awesome! Shipping within Ontario should not be too bad. If you don't mind saying, where are you located in SW Ontario? Do you know of any other trees in your area?

If it regrew from the stump, I would not be surprised that it got the blight and was cut down and just coppiced.

we are located in Chatham-Kent area. NO I haven't seen any other american chestnut trees, just horse chestnuts. We also have English walnut, heart nut, black walnut and 2 other types of walnuts can't remember the name of them right now and those last 2 trees are absolutely loaded to the brim with nuts this year!

English walnuts! That is awesome, I am not sure if they would grow well around Kingston, we're a lot more north than you are.

On the other hand, even though Kingston is not in the historical range of the Chestnut, I am pretty confident that it would grow given that it was found in Vermont and that there are some planted groves in Atlantic Canada.

Golden Bough sells hybrid chestnuts:
http://www.goldenboughtrees.ca/nut.shtml

Josey Hains wrote:Golden Bough sells hybrid chestnuts:
http://www.goldenboughtrees.ca/nut.shtml

Yup, I saw that. I am looking to start a large quantity of them though and I don't think I can afford buying 500 chestnuts from them.

grimo and the gellatly nut farm regional park both sell nuts for growing, $15 a lb and up I believe

http://www.empirechestnut.com also ships to Canada, order in sept-oct., delivery in nov.

Like most other trees, when planted from seed there is considerable variety in the nuts when planting chestnuts from seed. This is why pretty much all chestnuts for nut are grafts or clones. If you want to propagate a large number of trees cheaply you could buy a few cultivated/grafted trees and use them as material for grating onto seedling stock.

The uncultivated chestnuts we have have a big variation - the majority have small nuts, multiple to a pod, with little meat to them. A few have bigger nuts.

Cultivated varieties can be much bigger - like 5 times the weight per nut - have a single big nut per pod, and fall easily from their prickly pods. Some of them have even been bred to fruit as soon as the second year from planting.


There are big benefits to using grafted trees

incidently, the gellatly nut farm offers seeds from their skioka and layeroka selections, which Mark Shephard says have worked for him along with seedlings from another selection called skookum

I sent them an email to see if they would ship the nuts to Ontario, but they did not get back to me yet. Anybody in the Okanagan willing to go to the nut farm and shipping hybrid chestnuts?

I'll get you another email address to try. I can send you some if need be, I'll be making an order soon.

Just out of curiosity does anyone the why Chinese chestnut is not considered a so-called timber variety? I asked the folks at the gellatly farm and they seemed to think they were good, well they looked good and straight anyways. They originally planted them quite close so they grew pretty upright.

did you try gellatlynutfarm@telus.net

parks@cord.bc.ca is another one to try

Cee Ray wrote:Just out of curiosity does anyone the why Chinese chestnut is not considered a so-called timber variety? I asked the folks at the gellatly farm and they seemed to think they were good, well they looked good and straight anyways. They originally planted them quite close so they grew pretty upright.

From what I have read and heard they are much smaller than the American Chestnut so that they are not considered as good.

did you try gellatlynutfarm@telus.net

Yep, I sent them an email.

I sent an email last night so we'll see how it goes. I have a pésonal email from someone at the regional parks dept. who is responsible for the nut farm so should get a better response I hope.

The gellatly nut farm looks to be zone 5b or perhaps 6a, I'm in 5a but I'm going to try a bunch of nuts from their manoka walnut if I can. The manoka walnuts can get over 2.5" in length, they're quite impressive.

Do they have hazelnuts too?

Faroka hazel seems to be their top one. The oka part of their names comes from okanagan.

I haven't gotten a response yet from the Gellatly guys. I just placed an order with Grimo.

The people at Gellatly said that they don't know yet if they will ship. It seems like they are extremely busy.

Cee, I did not know that Grimo would sell seeds. Is it on their webpage?

Adrien Lapointe wrote:The people at Gellatly said that they don't know yet if they will ship. It seems like they are extremely busy.

Cee, I did not know that Grimo would sell seeds. Is it on their webpage?

It's not on their homepage and they don't have many. The ones that I wanted they don't have at all this year. Just email them and see

I can highly recommend the Grimo Nut Farm in Ontario. I have dealt with them for decades and their stock is always top quality. I got a some Am Chestnut seeds from them last year to send to Sepp Holzer in Austria. they are from a blight resistant breeding program.

To order seed nuts from the Grimos, give them a call nowish. They sell seed nuts from many varieties of mother trees and many different species as well.

When they dry this year's harvest of fresh nuts, most of them they dry enough to ensure they won't mold in storage. Seed nuts,however, become non-viable when they get that dry, so the Grimos only dry them a bit.

You have to order your seed nuts ahead of time, as they only prepare enough of these to fill then orders that have come in- the rest of the nuts are dried for eating.

Ernie Grimo, now mainly retired, has many decades of nut breeding work under his belt. He has created many Ontario adapted varieties that are still widely planted and has been a leading figure in NAFEX and the Northern Nut Growers Association.His daughter, Linda Grimo, is now running the farm and you will find her most helpful to talk to.

They are not very easy to deal with at Grimo I find.

Nut seeds seem to be not available this year or at least the types I was looking for.

anybody knows the price they sell the seeds for?

Adrien Lapointe wrote:anybody knows the price they sell the seeds for?

I can't find the email but it depends on what you want. Somewhere between $12-18/lbs for what I asked as far as I remember.

Oh and some went by seed. Something like 4 for $1. There was also an upcharge on something, can't remember and shipping & handling of course.

Just saw this, not sure if they will ship to Canada but its a great deal!

http://newfarmsupply.com/collections/nut-trees/products/chinese-chestnut-trees