American Chestnuts

My memory sucks anymore lol I looked back through my communications and this is part of the email exchange from Allen Nichols in the NY ACF and part of the project at SUNY ESF.

I am limiting people to a maximum of 10 nuts each, unless you have other people that want to plant an orchard, in a different area than where you are planting. I recommend an orchard of just 4-8 mother trees spaced about 15' apart in a square .Then if you have the area or some other place where you can plant some isolated trees several hundred yards from any other chestnut trees, you could plant some individual trees that you could later either hand pollinate with blight resistant pollen and/or graft a piece of blight resistant material into for a permanent pollinator.
 
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My memory sucks anymore lol I looked back through my communications and this is part of the email exchange from Allen Nichols in the NY ACF and part of the project at SUNY ESF.

I am limiting people to a maximum of 10 nuts each, unless you have other people that want to plant an orchard, in a different area than where you are planting. I recommend an orchard of just 4-8 mother trees spaced about 15' apart in a square .Then if you have the area or some other place where you can plant some isolated trees several hundred yards from any other chestnut trees, you could plant some individual trees that you could later either hand pollinate with blight resistant pollen and/or graft a piece of blight resistant material into for a permanent pollinator.
That's what I remember.
I have 3 locations that are a minimum of 5 miles apart. Each will have 4-6 trees.
 
Did most of you get your seeds from the ACF?
 
I did yessir, they had a small radical when I got them and every one of them started to take off. I direct seeded and put 2' tubes on them. Something found them and dug around the bases, lifted the tubes and ate them :/ I have direct seeded a lot of things and never had that happen but it was in a different area than I usually plant, they got all my acorns I planted in the same area too so maybe just closer to the squirrils.
 
I did yessir, they had a small radical when I got them and every one of them started to take off. I direct seeded and put 2' tubes on them. Something found them and dug around the bases, lifted the tubes and ate them :/ I have direct seeded a lot of things and never had that happen but it was in a different area than I usually plant, they got all my acorns I planted in the same area too so maybe just closer to the squirrils.
There is evidence that critters are genetically hardwired to live chestnuts. Was the dominant
Mast for thousands of years. Makes sense they will go around other things to find chestnuts.
 
Did most of you get your seeds from the ACF?
I got some from state chapter, some from national organization, and I got 2 year old seedlings from a nursery in Tennessee.
 
I haven't received this year's nuts yet. Should be any day now.
 
My mother trees are from ACF also.
 
I’m glad y’all are in to this too. Native chestnuts and longleaf pine are two of my prime focuses.
 
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