Chris Holcombe

Michael Cox wrote:It's been a bonkers mast year in the UK for all nut crops. Bumper harvests of chestnuts, and the size is much bigger than normal. Over the past few weeks we have filled multiple bags with BIG nuts of great quality. No one seems to know exactly what triggers a mast year.

Interesting. I didn’t think chestnuts participated in mast behavior. They’ve been very consistent for 5yrs for me, ramping up more every year.

Thought I would share what I do with my chestnut crop. I cook a few in the oven but the vast majority get dehydrated and then I grind them into flour and use them in place of wheat flour. For recipes that are sweet and use artificial leavening this works well. So cookies, muffins, pancakes, etc. There’s also an old italian 50/50 chestnut and wheat flour bread recipe I dug up. I had a really hard time getting it to rise so I only made it once.

I generally pull them in november. I’ve not seen them get fully ripe yet but they’ve gotten close some years. Whenever the first frost is forecast i’ll go out there and just pull the whole crop down.

Here's some pictures in August for Seascape, Arbequina and Universal. It's a bit hard to tell them apart at the moment but Seascape and Universal will continue swelling while Arbequina usually stops a little larger than this. I don't know if it's my lack of watering or just genetics. Seascape is the first picture. Arbequina is the picture in the middle and then Universal I believe.

I realized this year that chestnut seedlings can thrive in Portland through the summer with zero water. I’m pretty sure they’re going to become weeds which is awesome. Last year i found one or two. This year i’m seeing dozens of them 😁. This is great grafting material, potential sales or even maybe an improved generic adaptation for this area. I started with a good selection of parents so I’m fairly confident the offspring should also be great here. This is a pretty cool outcome. I had a strong sense that they would do well here but I never thought they’d do this well. Our summers are pretty rough and can lack rain for 4 or even 5 months sometimes. Then we get nearly non stop rain over the fall, winter and spring. I’ve noticed many trees get beat up pretty badly by this cycle. Mediterranean ones don’t seem to have an issue.

Just put together a little dry stacked grill today. Fired it up and it works great. It was super cheap but i wonder if there’s some modifications i can make to increase the durability of it. As i understand it, cinder blocks don’t hold up well against flames. My neighbor gave me a hand stacking this and we turned the bottom blocks on their side to get some airflow under the fire. You can hear it make a bit of a whoosh sound which is cool and keeps the smoke down. I was was thinking a cheap mod could be to move the cinder blocks out a little bit and line the interior burn area with bricks. Any other cheap mods i can try?

Not well. None of them rooted. I’m not sure what happened, maybe blue elders just don’t like rooting from stem cuttings

Mike Barkley wrote:That is a great piece of work Chris. What did you use as a grill or base plate?

I used regular red brick. I probably should’ve used fire brick

Thanks! I feel like this has given me a lot of good experience and now I understand how useful these ovens are. They produce a really good tasting food.

I finally had the time this summer to build my first mud oven. It came out pretty well and it works for the most part. It has a lime plaster outer shell. I think I messed up by using 1/4” hardware cloth as the inner support structure. Instead of stacking the mud flat I pressed it against the hardware cloth. That created a problem where now tiny bits of mud are flaking off as I use it. I’ve started thinking about what might be a good next project. I’m thinking an oven with a fire brick interior in the style of walker.