Chestnuts roasting over an EPA-approved wood stove

[1750]

I bought some chestnuts at the farmers' market this morning and roasted some over the stove.

It got me thinking again about planting some chestnut trees, and I wondered if any of the fine folks here had already done that, and if so what did you plant and how did it work out for you?

Thanks.

 

[peakbagger]

Your kids may enjoy them. They take a real long time to bear fruit and although they are getting close to a blight resistant variety, the currently available trees are not quite there yet but close. There are folks who sell blight resistant nuts for planting on Ebay but they may just be from geographically isolated specimens

 

[1750]

Your kids may enjoy them. They take a real long time to bear fruit and although they are getting close to a blight resistant variety, the currently available trees are not quite there yet but close. There are folks who sell blight resistant nuts for planting on Ebay but they may just be from geographically isolated specimens

Thanks, Peak. I have read about the efforts to breed the blight-resistant N.American chestnut. It's very interesting, and I agree it sounds like they are getting close. I think it will be quite awhile before any of those trees will be available to the public.

Additionally, you can plant any of the Chinese/Korean/Japanese varieties, and they are typically very blight-resistant (they evolved with the asian blight that devastated the N. American chestnut). There are also the European/Japanese hybrids that produce bigger nuts ("Colossal" is the most popular of these, with 15-20 nuts/#). These grafted/hybrid trees are said to typically start producing in 3-4 years (just planting seeds purportedly takes much longer).

I just wondered if any of the Hearthers (Hearthens?) had given this a try. This seems like a brew-your-own/grow-your-own kind of crowd.