Ep. 179 – Seeds Have a Memory – My Adventures in Growing Chestnuts in Kansas

My Spring Wins and Losses

I am a guy who grows chestnuts in Kansas, where we can go from 33 degrees to 96 in two days. Sometimes it feels like the odds are against me.

Seeds have a memory. They thrived and reproduced in a certain climate. And they remember that place. A tree bought from GA will leaf out earlier than a local tree. And that can be a problem.

This weekend I culled trees. Trees that didn’t make it and ones that did not thrive.

I had ones that had tip die-back – they had leaves halfway up the tree seedling and then it was dead above that. That usually happens because of Winter, but it also can happen when growing trees in tree tubes in a pasture.

I first cut off the top and said, “I can save this!”. Then I thought: I don’t want a tree in my orchard that will die back halfway in the Winter, and I certainly don’t want to sell a tree like that and get a bad reputation.

Not everyone feels that way. I heard a story this week of an online nursery that sells chestnut trees, but also sells culinary chestnuts to eat. They pull the best, largest chestnuts to sell to grocery stores and they sprout out the small inferior chestnuts into seedlings and then sell the seedlings. The result will be trees that create smaller chestnuts! I was shocked when I heard that story, but maybe I shouldn’t have been.

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A guy came over to buy chestnut seedlings yesterday. He is from Nebraska and was passing through and came as a referral. He wanted 4 Qing and 4 Peach seedlings. I looked at the Peach seedlings and straight up told him that I wasn’t completely comfortable with them. They had delayed coming out of dormancy and several of them had tip die back. So I sold him something else instead. I am not bragging, it’s just how I feel about it. I don’t want to be like that big nursery.

I planted out several chestnuts and trees in my back orchard. Qing, Peach, and a Butterball crabapple that I got my friend Mike at 39th Parallel Nursery. That crabapple will hold apples on the tree into November or December. I planted it near the deer trails in the back pasture. (You can read more about it in What I’m Planting in My Pasture to Feed Deer Through Every Season).

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I grow chestnuts in Kansas. Why? Because the chestnuts I bought from elsewhere struggled or died. Now I collect local chestnut seeds and grow them into seedlings. I sell the extras that I don’t use. If you want Midwest Memory trees that will survive in Midwest Zones 5 -7, go to Grow Nut Trees.

I am now taking orders for Fall.

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The Meadow Creature broadfork is my go-to garden tool, a must for my clay soil. I use it for creating new in-ground garden beds – I just turn over the sod, add some compost, seeds, and cover it with woodchips.

How to Create a New Garden Bed with Milpa