Chestnuts

Hello Everyone out there,
My friend made these videosof me with some chestnut trees. I think they came out really nicely.

I'll be harvesting chestnuts again at the end of next month and hopefully will have plenty of seeds available for trade or sale.
Thanks and happy growing season,
Akiva

Awesome stuff Akiva.  Thanks for sharing the videos

Awesome videos and thanks for taking the time to post those, I am so envious. I planted some seedlings 3 years ago here in Michigan and am hoping they will grow into something someday but not much really going on yet.

Thanks. I just got lucky with the trees, my friend/neighbor planted those trees in the 70's. In Michigan there must be a lot of new chestnut orchards going in. I have heard a lot about the small industry starting up there.

Yes we have quite a commercial chestnut industry starting up here in Michigan they plant the Italian Asian hybrid grafted trees the trees are pretty expensive to purchase and you have to be located in the right climate within the state and soil type anybody here who is planting the cheaper seedling varieties never seem to get a crop so I'm not real optimistic on my plants

Awesome videos,
You can feel the passion and experience in your narration. Great job!
I'm hoping to get an order from you this year.

One question on the chestnuts, I noticed the deer fence on the younger one, 6' steel woven wire?
Any other tips, I'm ashamed to admit for all my success in actually getting seeds to sprout and grow I am having more and more frustration with deer eating things.
My oldest chestnut is 5' at 5 years old but was also 5' in year 2, i've had it clipped by deer twice and frozen back one year.
Thanks for sharing!

Yes, deer are a major concern when establishing chestnuts. I have lots of trees like the one you describe Russell. Sometimes I shove lots of thorny branches in the cages to stop the deer from eating the tree once its at the top of the cage.
Ray, I think there are commercial growers in Michigan with seedling trees. I know most of them use the grafted EuropeanxJapanese hybrids, but there are some with seedlings. As that industry grows, I think people will see that over the long haul, the seedlings are much more vigorous and get much larger. Some of them bear huge nuts, and they have the benefit of not having a graft union and being much cheaper.
Greg Miller in Ohio uses seedling trees along with grafted trees in his orchards and I think of him as an authority on commercial chestnut growing.

That is good to know. I planted the seedlings because I thought they would be more cold tolerant and less site specific, so far I think the seedlings are holding up to that. The main cultivar grown here is Collosial, I think that is mostly European genetics? I have been to some growers orchards and they have some beutiful set ups. The Michigan growers have a cooperative Chestnut growers incorporated, the nuts are processed at one of Michigan State Universities research farms.

I've read about their cooperative. I want to create something like that here in NY with friends. It seems like the most feasible way to be able to invest in nut processing equipment. The main things I want to produce are chestnut flour and hazelnut oil and flour.

Chestnut growers Inc. got tremendous help from MSU extension that is why they use one of their research farms where there is a certified kitchen available that's where they process the nuts and they have cold storage there they also got together purchased an Italian chestnut peeling machine they make  flour and have a nice selection of nuts. Dennis Fulbright  is a retired plant pathologist in crop and  soil science idepartment from MSU and he was the big help in getting the Chestnut Growers problems worked out starting in the 90s when a lot of growers were failing to establish productive orchards.  There were a lot of problems with disease resistance variety types along with which pollinators to establish for the varieties within the growing season we have here .it is a pretty high-tech process of How they establish their orchards