We use all of our good nuts for seed purposes, grading out all small or damaged nuts. In raising these trees, even from seed, we've had our troubles. We let them cure several weeks then plant them in well fed soil in a narrow trench about 2 inches deep. We place the nuts 5 or 6 inches apart; we fill the trench with sawdust level with the surface. We mound the soil over this about 4 inches until spring. Then it is removed. This method lets the shoots through, otherwise they tend to send 3 or 4 stems. The nut sends down the root very early in the spring. We have some trouble with the mole-mice combination; for this reason heavy soil and sawdust is better than sandy soil. As you know neither the nut nor the tree likes wet soil.
In raising the young tree the principal difficulty is in getting a trunked upright tree. A seedling, especially when transplanted the first year, flops all over like a flowering shrub. To get them up we plant them fairly close, prune them, and feed them. Our 1 year trees are usually two feet high and 2 year trees are 4 to 5 feet high. We wholesale our trees mostly to mail order nurseries and the largest had a 5% request for replacements.
There are troubles in growing Chinese chestnuts just as there are in most fruits and nut crops and, in a way, I am glad there are because I am of the opinion there is no such thing as harvesting without cultivation. For instance, if you plant them and let nature take its course—it will. It will on an apple, too.
We have found a few small lesions of chestnut blight which were removed by pruning and then painted with pine tar. They usually occurred at a previous point of pruning. Some of the transplanted seedlings have developed a twig canker at a bud, but I've never seen them kill one and even when we don't prune it out, the tree overcomes it by new growth.
The Japanese beetle attacks the chestnut but, although they were bad this year, one spraying of DDT was effective. The weevil (curculio) was bad enough last year so we are spraying this year. Small growers should put the nuts in metal containers and thus destroy the larvae, if any.
I would like to remark here that we are a nursery growing many ornamentals, and the Chinese chestnut, although low branched, is a very ornamental tree. I know of no tree that has a handsomer dark, shiny green leaf or one whose green color holds so well until frost.
Now I think you will agree I have reported the behavior of our trees fairly, the difficulties of raising the trees, and have emphasized that I doubt if you will get success with the Chinese chestnut without effort; yet in conclusion I would like to step into "fantasy". Our No. 19 tree bore 124 pounds; suppose you had 50 trees per acre bearing that quantity. You would get 6,000 pounds per acre. The European chestnut, which is not as good, brought 30c on the Baltimore market last year. That would mean $1,800.00 per acre. Imagine having 10 acres!
1947 CROP
Pounds of Chestnuts from Original Trees at Eastern Shore Nurseries, Inc.
No. 1, 78; No. 2, 58; No. 3, 51¼; No. 4, 7½; No. 5, 49; No. 6, 31; No. 7, 34; No. 8, 31½; No. 9, 63; No. 10, 40½ No. 11, 61½; No. 12, 64½; No. 13, 56; No. 14, 47½; No. 15, 74; No. 16, 60; No. 18, 106; No. 19, 25½—Total, 938¾ pounds.