Ken LaVere

So the first two photos are of the pot grown chestnuts I mentioned before. I planted the nuts in the pots around mid Feb, once the radicals had emerged. I planted about 12 out with the ones I direct seeded, we will see at the end of the year which does better. The nuts I direct seeded are at the most an inch high, the Chestnuts in pots are about 1.5' all ready we will see if they suffer any transplant shock. The roots were not bound in the slights, on some of them you could see fine white hairs at the bottom of the pot.

The last photo is of two chestnuts I seeded into 5gallon buckets, they are by far the largest!!

The yogurt cup is the big size....

Looks like something else likes to eat chestnuts as well

Chicken wire in place

Notice the broken top

UPDATE- Well Tom at Red Fern Farm were I got the seed nuts told me -"The wire covering is very important to protect the nuts not only from rodents, but even raccoons and deer--however, the squares on the hardware cloth are too small for the seedlings to grow through. If they do grow through they may be girdled by late summer, or, at the very least, severely damaged when you remove the wire. It's OK to leave the hardware cloth on for now, but you should switch to chicken wire before the seedlings start to emerge in the spring (probably April). The chicken wire isn't absolutely 100% protection, but it works pretty well for deer, raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and even mice. You can leave the chicken wire on until the following spring when it's time to dig up the seedlings and put them in their final locations."

Now last year I grew some chestnut seedlings from some nuts I collected from a random tree I found growing at my parents land in central KY. Most of those seedlings did not get more then 1.5 ' high. I then remembered that I had purchased seedlings from Tom and planted them the same time I planted the random seeds. The trees from Tom averaged 3' high at the end of there first year!
I decided to follow Toms recommendation. So the beginning of April I removed the mulch. To my disappointment the chestnuts had sprouted and tried coming up thru the mulch! I would say all together I broke about 1/3 of the tops off removing the mulch and even more changing the wire out.
I have tried growing chestnuts from seed 4 different ways this year direct seed, 5 gal bucked, bed method, 9x4" pots. My favorite method so far for plant vigor and ease of planting would be the pot method.

The result-

So on a quest to eat only pastured meat and more organ meat I found a local farm that raises 100% grass fed beef. There ground beef is like $6 a lb but I found that I could buy liver and heart for $3 a lb! So I have been experimenting with feeding the heart and liver to my family. I found that if I ground the heart in my hand grinder just as I would deer meat then it is almost indistinguishable from ground beef. I just ground the whole thing. The liver is to tough and strong even for me to enjoy it took me a while longer to figure that one out. What I finely ended up doing was grinding the liver and putting it in ice cube trays then adding it a cube or or two at a time into dishes.
My newest concoction has been to mix curry, about 1lb ground liver and spices let it soak for a couple hours, serve over rice or potato. That is by far the best way I have found.

Any thoughts?

Yup and chipmunks I have also heard that raccoons will dig them up and of course deer😳

Here are a couple more-

So Mark Shepard gave me this idea at an Acres USA conference. Cut the bottom out of your 5Gal bucket replace with 1/2x1/2" hardware cloth, fill with your choice of growing mixture (I used 1 part each of peat moss, perlite and local "soil").
Plant your nut seeds cover with hardware cloth, bury the bucked up to the lip then cover with mulch until spring. Sorry no before photos....