Five years growing Chestnut trees from Seed. We just got our First Chestnut Burrs.

so when we bought this property it had everything we were looking for the only thing we felt it lacked in was trees we didn't feel like there was enough wooded area when we bought this so what we decided to do on this east side of our property we decided to replant it into trees to try to turn it back into more of a forest area but instead of just planting like regular shade trees I wanted to pick a tree that was going to be beneficial to Wildlife so I decided on the the chestnut tree in fact it was the Dunston chestnut tree that we've planted that's an American Chinese hybrid supposed to be blight resistant and we started growing those from seed and we planted our first trees back in 2017 we planted 37 trees we bought a 25 pack of these tubes so we could only put 25 in tubes so out of all of those first in our first year I think we still got about 18 of those still alive and they were only in tubes we didn't have any trees survive that was in outside of a tube so you gotta understand we're planting these little seedlings they're only like a foot to 18 inches tall and these tubes drastically improved the success rate so a couple years later we ended up planting more planted more the next year and we planted the last ones we planted I think were in 2020 and we've got somewhere just under 100 between 90 and 100 Chestnut trees planted on our property along this side and then we've actually planted some in the back as well so this section of nine trees right here this is part of our original planting of trees and you can see some of them are fairly tall that's probably pushing uh getting close to 12 foot tall right there and some of these have been replanted I'd say probably two-thirds of these are probably original and that the growth rate changes really depending on the shade so the ones that are closest to the trees seem to grow the slowest we've had the best luck with the ones that are out in the open get the most sunlight so these tree tubes they're designed to stay on here for at least seven years to protect the tree at the beginning they have to be supported I've got a t-post on this one we've got some bamboo steaks we've got some cut off pieces of PVC pipe whatever we can stake in the ground to hold it up and it has to stay staked until the tree is big enough to support itself at the very beginning it grows up so fast it can't hold itself up now in about five years these trees are to the point where I could probably take these posts out and they'll stay up on their own this one back here is actually it's not attached no more to the post it's completely detached it's holding itself up so that seems to be the thing about five years you can finally start taking the posts out and just let them grow without being staked anymore so this one's held up with a bamboo steak and they don't work very well at all but you can see there's a tree inside of here I had several people say that they thought most of these tubes were empty but there's actually trees living inside of here you have to have the light shining right to be able to see it but out of all these trees out here there's probably only a couple empty tubes sometimes you'll have a deer come up and they'll hit it with their antlers and they can actually get the tree tube to to come off of the tree and that's basically what's happened here and you can see it's immediately branched out see how wide those branches are that that's what the tree tube is good for is it is it keeps it from making branches until it gets to the top it keeps it one continuous Long Tree until it reaches the top of the tube so to put a tube back over the top of this one I'm going to have to clip these branches off and then slide a tube over it so all the ones you see that are falling over are all the bamboo Stakes the bamboo steaks didn't work out I won't buy those again this tree right here one of our best performers this thing is probably 15 foot tall planted I think in 2019 it grew like six foot the first year it actually came all the way out of the tube the first year so this thing has grown you know about five feet a year to get that tall and it's already got a second tree right here that's growing out of the trunk right there yeah so it's crazy sometimes you get some that grow slow and sometimes you get something to grow fast like this one so in this section up here I counted a total of 55 places that we've planted trees and there's three that are dead or missing and 31 of them are up and out of the tube so they're at least five foot tall so I think that's pretty good you gotta keep in mind that a lot of these were planted in 2019 and 2020 um so a lot of these are only two three years old on this area so this area here is part of our original planting as well there's some in the back over there and then there's some of the ones that are planted further down that were planted later but you can see all these taller ones right through here these are all original 2017 five-year-old trees they're all they're all probably at least nine foot tall and this one right here is our biggest one right here it actually has Chestnut Burrs on it I had three on it hopefully they're all still there but it's got Burrs which is what chestnuts come in pull that down so that is a chestnut Burr and there's a couple more up here toward the top might have to get a ladder or try to shake them off of here we're going to try to open them up see if we got our first chestnuts so those Burrs were green and they're turning a yellow as they get ready to open up so probably the worst thing about these chestnuts is the outside of these are like little needles they will poke you and I don't seem to have gloves in the truck but we'll take these back and get some gloves we'll open these up hopefully you guys can see just how Pokey those are so you can see that one's got a line and it's starting to open up all right so that is unfertilized nuts in there and I'll open it up I'll show you what it looks like can you see there's another one so there was three little chestnuts inside of there and they are not fertilized so unfertilized nuts that's pretty calm in the first year it actually may take a few a couple more years before we start getting fertilized chestnuts same thing there is three unfertilized nuts in there so that's kind of what I expected I would been surprised if we would have got some for a few this one is the biggest though here's a chance it's probably this one if I can get it to open all right once again we have an unfertilized nut you can see so all these all had three nuts on the inside and they are all unfertilized so we got our first Chestnut burst in five years we planted that tree five years ago there's just not enough pollen in the orchard for those to produce chestnuts so I think a couple more years we'll have we'll have more mature trees producing pollen producing those Burrs and we'll end up getting chestnuts I think in the next couple years we'll get our first chestnuts so we're close we're really close um so I know we only went to two areas only showed you like two of the bigger areas that we planted chestnuts that's nice and open where you can see them and there's there's more that's planted back behind the equipment there's actually some planted back here in the woods you can maybe see a couple tree tubes back there across the pond I know those in the sunlight those tree tubes that are on the edge of the pond and the sunlight those are still alive there's several in the woods back there I don't know whether they are I haven't gone and checked them but I know that there's less success rate in the shade anytime you plant in the woods like that you're going to have a lower success rate best success is going to be out here in the open but uh yeah I didn't go everywhere today I'm not gonna go to every tree and check them but overall it looked like from the ones that we have planted that we looked on that side of the property there's probably only about six maybe eight that need to be replaced and I'm sure there's there's probably some back here in the woods that need replaced so we're going to end up planting some more chestnut trees this fall we're going to start growing them from seed again for next year so if you guys are interested in trying to grow some Dunstan Chestnut trees from seed I buy my seeds from I think it's a pike it's Chestnut Ridge of Pike County Illinois I'll go ahead and put a link down description not sponsored in any way this is where I buy my seeds from they posted on their Facebook page they're going to start selling chestnuts Friday October 22nd so next Friday they'll be selling Chestnut season on their website so I'll leave a link to their website in my video and then also maybe leave a link to a couple videos of growing these from seed germinating them you got a you gotta cold stratify them you got to put them in some moist peat moss put them in your fridge for like three months and then they'll grow a Tap Root and they'll be ready to be planted outside so I'll leave a couple videos on the process and then also leave a link to the tree tubes as well um but I'm gonna I'm gonna be buying some here next week myself and I'm gonna germinate some more of them this year and replant any of the empty tubes and I also sell them I that's what I do I also sell them for five bucks a piece and that kind of pays for the pot and the soil and gets me a couple bucks for the plant and then I'll sell the tubes for cost like five dollars a piece so I can sell a tree in a tube to people I know for like 10 bucks and uh people want them for food plots and people want them just for trees but they're really good for deer and Wildlife and I can't wait for that to happen here it'll be great when I can sit out here and just watch a bunch of deer out here eating these Chestnut trees I think it'll be fantastic so they're eating the chestnuts off the trees I don't want them eating the tree but anyway I think that's gonna be it for this video I just want to kind of share where they were I've had people ask throughout the year and I wanted to I wanted it to be mowed around before I I did an update plus it's the perfect time now for if people are interested then I can go get the seeds here and start planting their own so that's going to be it for today's video so thanks for watching I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Country View Acres

Views: 119,634

Keywords: Homestead, farm, farmstead, hobby farm, self sufficient, homesteading, rural life, country life, farm life, chestnut trees, dunstan chestnut tree, growing chestnuts, growing chestnuts from seed, chestnut orchard, chestnut forest, tree tube, tree shelter, miracle tree tube shelter, planting chestnuts

Id: TIqpc4mjxtM

Length: 11min 2sec (662 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 16 2022