Direct Seeding Chestnuts....Sort of...

[yoderjac]

I'm trying something new this year. For many years, I grew high volumes of wildlife trees, including a lot of chestnuts and Allegheny Chinquapins by starting them under lights in the winter in rootmakers. A few years back, I decided I was too old to continue this at the farm and sold all my rootmaker containers.

Last spring, I decided to direct seed some Allegheny Chinquapins. The seeds were from the previous fall kept in a crisper and all had root radicles when I planted them They were protected with tree tubes and planted in slits through weed barrier to reduce competition. THEY ALL FAILED! I must have planted 30 of them. There is a picture on this thread: AC and OCs Thread. These are at my retirement property near the barn so I was able to watch them daily and I'm sure none were predated. I'm not sure why they failed.

So, I'm trying something new this year. I collected a bunch of chestnuts from my Dunstan (sons of Dunstan) trees last fall. Because beavers cut down all the ACs, they did not produce nuts last year. I still had some 2 year old AC nuts in the crisper.

I'm going to wait until I get top growth. I'm not using root pruning pots, so this will be a balancing act. I'll need to plant them before the roots j-hook or circle and I'll need to dig deep enough to accommodate the root radicle at planting time. I'm simply taking some 5 gal buckets, drilling a few drain holes in the bottom and filling them about 1/3 full with pine bark mulch for drainage. Next I'm adding about 1/3 full of cheap big box store potting soil with fertilizer. Finally, I'm adding an inch or 2 of sphagnum the nuts, and covering them with sphagnum.

A few of the chestnuts had significant mold and a few did not survive the float test, but 95 percent sunk. They had been in the fridge since September with no added sphagnum or water. About 5% of the survivors had a root radicle just beginning. The ACs were very moldy. Only a few survived the float test and none had root radicles.

Here are the buckets before I covered them with sphagnum:

I watered them and put them in the barn. Tomorrow, I plan to hang them on my overhang posts where they can get some sun, but I first need to put hardware cloth over them to keep birds out.

I have no idea how this method will work out. I'm wondering if I'll have root entanglement by the time I transplant. I have way more nuts in these buckets than I have room to plant, so I only need a small percentage to survive. Any extras I'll offer to the neighbors.

 

[yoderjac]

We will see how this technique works:

 

[yoderjac]

My experience germinating chestnuts has been indoors under lights where temperature is 75 degrees and humidity is controlled. Typically after I pull the nuts from the fridge, it is about 2 weeks before I start seeing top growth.

This is a bit more uncontrolled. I think @mattpatt starts his outdoors. These went out on March 19th. It has been about 2 weeks. I'm seeing nothing yet. I'm hoping this is just because ore nights are cooler (so are most days) then in my old growing room. We have not had any frost since I put them out. Our last threat of frost is usually about April 15th.

I guess the nuts know when it is safe to begin top growth.

Any advice is welcome. I'm finding watering interesting not using rootmakers and intending to direct seed these after they show top growth. They are in sphagnum sitting on potting soil sitting on pine bark. I water heavily and let water run out the bottom. Since the 5 gal buckets are much deeper than the root radicles will grow before I plant them, I'm not worried about wet feet. Each day, when I look at the sphagnum, it is dry, so I've been watering almost daily.

 

[yoderjac]

Perhaps a little encouragement today. When I first put them in the buckets, I covered them well with sphagnum. I think this helps keeping them from drying out too much. However after multiple waterings, the sphagnum settles and I'm able to see a few of the nuts. While I don't see any top growth yet, I am seeing that the visible nuts do have root radicles. Hopefully in the next week or two I'll start seeing top growth.

 

[yoderjac]

Well low and behold, I see top growth! Two of the three buckets each have one chestnut with about 1/4" of top growth sticking up. I think I'll wait until they are about 3"-4" tall before direct seeding them. That should not be long. I have not seen anything from the AC, but those seeds were 2 years old and I had to wash off some mold from them before planting. The ones I planted were the small percentage of the 2 year old AC seed that passed the float test.

When there is more to see, Ill take some pics.

 

[yoderjac]

I have at least 3 with a 1/4" or more of top growth. They are calling for lows in the high 20s or low 30s tonight, so I brought them into the barn today. I'll put them back out tomorrow afternoon. Looks like this is our last threat of frost.

 

[yoderjac]

Looks like we are past the last frost, so I put the buckets back outside. Look like I'm seeing more chestnuts pop up. I have not seen any AC germinate yet, but the seed was 2 years old.

 

[KSQ2]

After my failure last year, I’m experimenting too, you’ve been watching a commenting, so I won’t mention details you already know. I’m hopeful as well. Trying new methods is pretty fun; I’ll be watching this.

 

[yoderjac]

After my failure last year, I’m experimenting too, you’ve been watching a commenting, so I won’t mention details you already know. I’m hopeful as well. Trying new methods is pretty fun; I’ll be watching this.

Here are a couple pictures for you. Sorry if they are blurry. I had to stick the phone under the hardware cloth so I did not have to remove it.

Hopefully you get the idea, top growth is starting. I'm amazed how slow it is compared to the controlled conditions of starting them indoors under lights. So far, I'd estimate the total in all 3 buckets to be about 10 with top growth. The tallest is about 2 1/2 inches. most are just 1/4" or so.

 

[yoderjac]

As if this morning, I was able to find about 15 total with some top growth. Today is our last threat of frost. I'm going to consider planting some of these later this week or next. 15 is a pretty small percent of the total number of chestnuts. So far, no ACs. I think I can probably count them out.

 

[yoderjac]

We started the process of direct seeding these nuts with root radicles and top growth. We haven't actually planted a tree yet but we did the prep work for the first two trees. We were smart enough to strip off the top soil and keep it separate from the subsoil when we excavated for the house. Since I had the mini-excavator handy, I decided to use it for soil improvement. At the farm we have very think topsoil and then clay. Here at the retirement property, we have anywhere from 6"-10" of top soil as it was an old pasture.

I used the excavator to remove the top soil from the planting hole and put it in a cart. I then used it to dig down about two feet or so. I used the teeth to rake the bottom of the hole so it does not glaze. Next we added several cups of 10-10-10. We covered that with the native clay. Next, I went to our pile of top soil and grabbed a bucket full and dumped it in the hole. Next I mixed the top soil in the cart with about 15% potting soil and added some Osmocote slow release fertilizer and mixed it all up. This went at the top layer on the hole. We did this for two trees and then my wife watered both holes good. That should let things settle enough that I'll know tomorrow if I need to add a bit more top soil.

I'm watching the buckets of chestnuts closely. As of today, there are at least 18 with top growth. The largest top growth is about 3". We have another inch or so to go before it hits the hardware cloth.

Tomorrow, I hope to plant the first two trees and do the prep for a couple more. My plan for the actual planting is to carefully remove the nut from the bucket. Hopefully it only has a root radicle and no lateral roots and should be easy to extract from the sphagnum and potting soil. With any luck it won't be down to the pine bark layer yet. Once extracted, I'll dig the smallest hole it will fit in with a hand trowel and insert the root radicle. I'll probably sprinkle top soil in to fill any air gaps around the root. These trees are far too young to extract the nut yet. Once planted, I plan to put a short one foot or less tree tube and stake it with a fiberglass rod I saved from collapsed turkey blinds of bygone years. We will then put remesh cage over it and attach it to a T-post. We the will water and mulch the tree. Hopefully, these are far enough from the woods to keep squirrels off of them. I'll post some pics after we plant the first couple as well as any lessons learned as they progress.

 

[yoderjac]

We haven't actually panted any yet. We spent today doing more prep and I really screwed up. We did the same prep work as yesterday for four more trees. Last year I direct seeded 42 ACs that had good root radicles but no top growth. This post was just after they were planted: https://deerhunterforum.com/threads/ozark-chinquapin.5765/page-5#post-131005 None of them made it. I did no special care after planting and tubing them. It was my first try at direct seeding ACs.

It does not look like any of the 2 year old AC seed is going to germinate in the buckets. So, I decided to put some Chestnuts in that area. Of course Chestnuts need a lot more spacing than ACs, so I figured I could get at least 3 more in down there. To prepare for that, I removed all the tree tubes from the stakes today. Next, I decided to spray that entire area down with gly even though there is a weed barrier there. I figured tomorrow, I'd pull the stakes and mow all that stuff down. It should have had plenty of time to absorb the gly by then. Here is what the area looked like before I started:

Since I'm doing all the soil amendment for the caged trees, I figured I'd try something different and just use the tubes with no amendments like I did for the ACs last year just to see if there is a big difference.

Ok, ready for my screw-up? You may have already guessed it. I just focused on pulling the 6' tubes from the weeds and grabbed the sprayer and drove around it on my ATV Spraying with gly. Guess what I found?

You guessed it. I saw it just as I sprayed it!!! Oh well, stuff happens! Hopefully planting will begin tomorrow.

 

[yoderjac]

FINALLY - We planted some nuts!

The planting sites were still wet from watering last night. I used a hand rake to loosen the top soil. I used a hand trowel to dig a hole. Next, I extracted the nuts with the largest top growth. I was amazed at the size of the roots already. They were not easy to extract without disturbing the surrounding nuts too much. The sphagnum was pretty dense with all the top watering every day, but eventually I was able to extract them. When I disturbed an adjoining nut with top growth, I would plant that one next as it would be easier to extract.

Here is what an extracted one looks like:

Here is one immediately after planting:

I wanted to protect them from rodents and the like while young. They are a reasonable distance from the hardwoods and I think the squirrels have plenty of food in the woods. I used small tubes since they will be inside cages:

Finally, we mulched and caged them with the remesh cages:

We also decided not to do the tube only approach I was considering. When I mowed over the areas this morning, some of the weed barrier came up. We decided to pull it all and add two more full prep planting sites there. We got a total of 5 chestnuts planted today and have 3 more to do.

 

[yoderjac]

We finished planting the last three chestnuts today. We have plenty left over. As far as the germination part of this project, I'd say it was a success. They were getting close, but not of the tap roots had hit the bottom of the bucket yet.

The next question will be how many survive the transplanting process so young.

 

[EET]

I’m not claiming to know but from what I’ve read the AC doesn’t need stratification and should be planted as soon as it’s harvested. I just started 2 last fall, 1st time mine have produced. I overwintered the pots in my shed when the temperature was below 30 degrees. I was also told it’s best to keep them potted for a year so they can establish good root systems, voles loves eating the roots. They sprouted fairly quickly last fall, and survived the winter as long as I can keep the squirrels away they will get planted this fall(I’ve already had 2 close calls with squirrels digging in the pots).

 

[yoderjac]

I’m not claiming to know but from what I’ve read the AC doesn’t need stratification and should be planted as soon as it’s harvested. I just started 2 last fall, 1st time mine have produced. I overwintered the pots in my shed when the temperature was below 30 degrees. I was also told it’s best to keep them potted for a year so they can establish good root systems, voles loves eating the roots. They sprouted fairly quickly last fall, and survived the winter as long as I can keep the squirrels away they will get planted this fall(I’ve already had 2 close calls with squirrels digging in the pots).

You are absolutely correct, ACs don't need to be cold stratified. They will start developing a root radicle very quickly. There is too much predation for me to direct seed them in the fall. If I try to grow them in Rootmakers starting in the fall, they would be huge by spring, and I'm busy with hunting in the fall. I've propagated them for years. I put them in the crisper, just like cold stratifying chestnuts, but do not add any moisture or sphagnum. I'm not trying to cold stratify them, but to put them in to a suspended animation of sorts. After our hunting season, I would remove both chestnuts and ACs from the crisper. The Chestnuts were in moist sphagnum, but the ACs were not. I would then put them in 18s under lights. Both would develop root radicles and then top growth.

I had it timed pretty well so the roots were filling the 18s and they were ready for transplant into 1 gal RB2s about mid-April which is our last threat of frost. I would then remove the nuts as I transplanted them and move them to my lower deck and begin acclimating them to the sun.

This was very successful and I now have many of both growing at the farm.

I thought I was done with trees so I sold all my Rootmaker containers before I retired. I decided I wanted to add a few to our retirement property. Two falls ago, I collected a bunch of AC nuts and put them in the crisper with no added moisture as normal. Last spring, after they produced root radicles, I direct seeded 42 of them in tree tubes. I reference this in some of my previous posts. I thought not of them made it. I was wrong and when I was preparing the areas for this spring, I accidently sprayed the lone AC that made it with gly.

With such bad results direct seeding last year, I decided to try something different this year. I collected a bunch of chestnuts from my trees at the farm but did not collect any ACs. I did have a bag of ACs that had been in the fridge from the previous year that did not get used. My intent this spring was to let trees get larger and develop top growth before planting them. The challenge was to make sure the root radicle did not hit the bottom of the container and j-hook or circle. Getting the timing right seems to be key so they are planted in the field before this happens.

Unfortunately, being in the crisper for 2 years was too long for the ACs. I have had success with putting chestnuts in suspended animation for 2 years and having them germinate. Most of the ACs in the bag were moldy after 2 years. Only a handful passed the float test. It looks like none of them germinate.

Provided you are using a root pruning container system, you could over winter trees and keep them for a second growing season before planting them in the field. With smooth pots you will have j-hooking and circling roots long before 2 years. Regardless of the type of tree, I've had most success planting them when the roots have filled a 3 gal RB2 regardless if it is one or two seasons.

 

[yoderjac]

I gave away the buckets of germinated nuts to the neighbors today. There were about 40 that were left that had top growth. They also have some friends who said they wanted some so I'm sure they will share.

BTW, I'm sorry for all the blurry pics on this and other threads. I thought it was me, but it got so bad that I could no longer upload checks for deposit because they were too blurry. The camera lens on my phone was smashed. I got by for a while by removing the fragments, but they camera will no longer focus properly. I got a new phone today, so my pics should improve.