Random thoughs on Stratifying Chestnuts

[silver_yummies]

Plan on putting mine under the lights next Saturday which would be 3 months exactly from when I put them in the fridge.

 

[yoderjac]

Will do. Had pretty good luck with it last year, here is one of them;

Nice looking tree. Without protection, mine got the central leaders munched and produced more bushes than trees. The tubes helped mine a lot. I also read a couple studies regarding how much weeds can compete with small trees. They showed dramatic growth difference when weeds were suppressed for about 5' around the tree. I don't do the full 5', but I'm using gas and water permeable landscaping cloth covered by quarry stone around mine now. Most of my older trees don't have it, but all the trees I plant now do.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Plan on putting mine under the lights next Saturday which would be 3 months exactly from when I put them in the fridge.

If you got the moisture right, you probably already have radicles started on many and you should get good germination rates!

 

[H20fwler]

Nice looking tree. Without protection, mine got the central leaders munched and produced more bushes than trees. The tubes helped mine a lot. I also read a couple studies regarding how much weeds can compete with small trees. They showed dramatic growth difference when weeds were suppressed for about 5' around the tree. I don't do the full 5', but I'm using gas and water permeable landscaping cloth covered by quarry stone around mine now. Most of my older trees don't have it, but all the trees I plant now do.

Thanks,

Jack

Yep I've heard the same. I've got enough bigger chestnuts trees screened and caged that planting the stratified nuts in spring is just for kicks now. If a few make it to full size that will be great, if not I'll just keep doing it for something to do that time of year sooner or later some will. I plant them very randomly with no real plan in mind, it's fun to notice them as I'm wandering around the property months or a year later and see one poking up looking wild and healthy.

 

[yoderjac]

Yep I've heard the same. I've got enough bigger chestnuts trees screened and caged that planting the stratified nuts in spring is just for kicks now. If a few make it to full size that will be great, if not I'll just keep doing it for something to do that time of year sooner or later some will. I plant them very randomly with no real plan in mind, it's fun to notice them as I'm wandering around the property months or a year later and see one poking up looking wild and healthy.

I think planting location has an impact on browsing. Most of mine were planted in full sun in fields with a clover base. Those trees that were not protected were pruned into bush form by deer. My never produce nuts. Who knows. Just for kicks, I planted a dozen or so small seedlings in thinned pined. They were certainly slower growing than trees in full sun, but not as slow as I expected. These seemed to have very little browse pressure.

I think it simply comes down to the fact that deer come to feed in the clover, but there nature is browsing and if they walk by a seedling they are likely to take a bite. Deer presence over time in those pines is probably considerably less.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Well, I'm starting to scratch my head a bit. Last go around I had 50% with top growth in 11 days an 70% in 20 days for my ACs. It is not day 13 and I have none. Most had radicles when I planted them. I don't know what to expect with the seguins. I better start seeing something in the next few days or I'll start thinking something is wrong.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[yoderjac]

Finally got the first little AC head popping up. Maybe I planted them a little deeper this year causing the delay in my seeing top growth.

 

[silver_yummies]

Looking good here so far.

 

[yoderjac]

Looks like you got good germination tis time. I hope they work out for you!

 

[silver_yummies]

Looks like you got good germination tis time. I hope they work out for you!

Thanks! First time doing chestnuts or any other tree from seed.

 

[yoderjac]

Thanks! First time doing chestnuts or any other tree from seed.

Are those the regular rootmaker 18s? The lights are probably a bit high unless you raised them for the pictures. It is hard to tell scale from the pics, but I try to keep my fluorescent lights 2"-4" above the trees. Light energy diminishes with the distance squared. You certainly got good germination!

Thanks,

Jack

 

[silver_yummies]

Interesting. I just raised the lights tonight, they were probably only 5-6” away, now they are much further away. I’ll lower them back down again. Thanks

 

[silver_yummies]

Oh, those are just cheap 18s from Amazon that have 4 drainage holes on the bottom.

 

[yoderjac]

Oh, those are just cheap 18s from Amazon that have 4 drainage holes on the bottom.

If they are just drainage holes, you won't get the root pruning. Chestnuts produce a long taproot. If it is not pruned, it will circle or j-hook in the container. If buying rootmaker (or equivalent) root pruning containers is not in your budget, I would suggest direct seeding chestnuts rather than trying to start them early indoors. Also keep in mind that success with root pruning trees requires a system of containers.

The first stage of root pruning containers (18s) are tapered to redirect the tap root and then secondary and tertiary roots to the holes. They are elevated so you get good airflow below the containers. I've grown a lot of trees under lights in the winter with root pruning containers over the years. If you want more info on the theory and mechanics, just let me know.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[silver_yummies]

Jack - I’m all ears and would like to learn more.

 

[yoderjac]

Jack - I’m all ears and would like to learn more.

Growing trees in smooth sided containers causes roots to circle or j-hook. While these trees can look fine when young, eventually the roots constrict themselves as the trees get old. You don't have this issue when you direct seed trees, just trees grown in containers.

Dr. Whitcomb did a lot of the early research on air pruning. In the old days they cut the bottoms out of milk cartons. Whitcomb has a bunch of technical papers available but here is a general summary:

When a tap root hits air, it desiccates and stops growing. This causes the tree to produce secondary roots called upstream branching. Most of this branching occurs in the last 4" of root prior to the pruning point. This natural desiccation of the root does not leave an open wound which can be an entry point for disease as manual pruning does. When these secondary roots hit air, the process repeats creating more upstream branching and tertiary roots and so on.

The efficiency of absorbing water and nutrition for growth is a function of the number of fine terminal root tips, not the length of the roots. In nature, trees grow long tap roots as insurance. This ensures they get access to water during a drought if the top foot or two of soils dry out. When trees get large enough this generally is not an issue in most places except perhaps arid regions but it can be life or death with younger trees. They trade maximizing growth for a lower risk of complete death.

Keep in mind that while a tree with many fine terminal root tips is more efficient, they can only extract water and nutrients from where they reach. That is why you need a series of containers to grow root pruned trees. You start with a small container called an 18. They are designed with an appropriate taper that redirects roots to the openings and are "hung" from some kind of rack so air flows below the container. If you planted directly from an 18 into the field, while the tree would have a great root system for its age, the root ball would only reach a few inches in each direction. Having the top few inches of soil dry out is common in most climates from time to time which will kill the tree. The second stage container should allow approximately 4" on all three sides of the root ball. It can be a bit more or less, this is not critical, but if you use too large of a container for your second stage you will get less root pruning since most of that upstream branching occurs in the last 4". There are several designs containers use for this second stage. I typically use 1 gal Rootbuilder II containers from Rootmaker for this but other guys have good success with other designs as well. Whitcomb designed the Rootmaker containers so they definitely conform to the principles of his research. The important thing is that the container design conforms to those principles, not the brand and as I say others use different brands with different degrees of success and failure. For the third stage I use 3 gal RB2s.

In my climate I get the best success planting from 3 gal RB2s but reasonable success planting from 1 gal RB2s. Here is a thread specifically aimed at maximizing growth with air pruning containers: http://www.habitat-talk.com/index.p...h-rootmakers-transfered-from-qdma-forum.5556/ It has pictures and shows what can be done in a single growing season with chestnuts.

One reason you get such good growth with these containers is that energy is not wasted. With a bare root or B&B tree, the roots are manually pruned by the shovel when trees are extracted from the ground. With trees grown in smooth containers you need to remove the media and prune any circling or j-hooking roots. Because of the disturbed root system, these trees sleep for the first year, creep for the second, and finally leap in the third year. The tree spent energy growing those roots that are pruned off which is wasted. With an air pruning container system, the root is terminated at the opening by air. All of the energy that would have been used to grow that root is redirected to upstream branching (more terminal roots) and increased top growth. Increase top growth means more photosynthesis and more energy goes into the tree.

When I plant from an RB2 container, it unwraps from around the root ball leaving the root ball completely intact. While bare root trees need to be planted when dormant, root pruned trees can be planted any time of year as long as supplemental water is available during dry periods until the tree is fully established. They don't have the multi-year recovery from transplant shock. Transplant shock is minor and trees just seem to keep growing immediately after they are planted.

Root pruning containers are not a good fit for everyone. In arid regions, unless you are able to provide supplemental water, I'd recommend direct seeding. In my area, we get enough spring and fall/winter rain that I plant in spring and fall and never need to provide supplemental water. By the time summer rolls around the trees are well enough established to handle our dry periods.

Hope this helps,

Jack

 

[silver_yummies]

Update 6 weeks later. Had to buy larger pots and transplanted them 3 weeks ago in these to give them the space they needed. Didn’t have the space or lights to save them all. I’ll need to buy less nuts next year or find more space to grow them next year.

 

[yoderjac]

They look healthy above ground!

 

[cavey]

New #37
Update 6 weeks later. Had to buy larger pots and transplanted them 3 weeks ago in these to give them the space they needed. Didn’t have the space or lights to save them all. I’ll need to buy less nuts next year or find more space to grow them next year.

Their going to get taller! and we have we to much snow... the way its going it might be July before all this melts :-(

Their looking very good, brought back some memories ...lol I was there last year... by the time I finished multiple pottings and had moved them out from under the lights in spring I had 3' plants, I had to stake them while under the lights too... your going to get a lot of use out of those adjustable chains. It looked like I had a pot growing operation going on hidden in my basement. I'm off the hook this year I screwed up (ordered a smaller bag of nuts tossed them into the fridge - forgot to get around to giving them some moisture) - ended up with a bag full of rattly nuts... just fed them to the squirrels

 

[H20fwler]

Next week looks like its going to get warm enough for me to direct seed a couple gallon bags of Dunstan's I have in the crisper drawer. They have some nice radicles on them, mixing them into my shrub strips.