this is how you make chestnut trees
golly it is a tough day it's a combination of freezing rain so I
figured it would be as good a time as any today to show you guys how I make
chestnut seedlings some of the trees that I planted last go-around were trees
that I had sprouted in our apartment in Washington DC when I was still living
full-time in DC and I brought him up here when I moved up but most of them
were purchased from a couple of different orchards but what I'm gonna
try to do is actually sprout my own trees to be ready for next year at this
time for replanting to do that for chestnuts you need to do something known
as cold stratification that means the chestnut seed cold to let the seed know
that it's time to sprout that's true for chestnuts that's true for acorns it's
true for butternut just a wide variety of different trees require this cold
stratification now in nature the cold stratification just happens by the seeds
sitting on the ground and going through a winter cycle last year when I sprouted
the trees I actually did it in our refrigerator if you want to see the
video I'll leave a link up top it worked pretty well but I had problems with mold
and some of them just got gross and just didn't sprout my buddy Akiva Silver
who's down at twisted tree orchard in New York he has this way of sprouting
chestnuts and so I'm actually gonna give his method to try this go around the way
his method works is this you take your standard five-gallon bucket our farm is
built on these five gallon buckets what you do is you cut a hole in the bottom
of the bucket and then I put some plastic netting at the bottom of it this
way it's gonna prevent rodents from getting inside and I'm gonna just take
this bucket I already have this pre dug hole I'm gonna drop it down there
and then I'm gonna add some some sand you know just like standard place and it
doesn't have to be anything all that fancy you can also use sawdust to do
this method I didn't have much luck actually locating sawdust so that's how
I ended up going with the sand let's start with a layer of sand just on the
bottom so I got these chestnuts from an orchard just I know couple pounds worth
well at the same time keeps them nice and cool and keeps them from drying out
it also and I found
I'm also gonna add some water so that I can ensure that these things aren't too
dry what's nice about this and the open bucket model is it really allows you to
match the Earth's moisture in humidity but let's add some water because the
sand is a little bit dry that dream pretty nicely ice there so my next step
is going to be to take the lid nice and tight I'm gonna add this nice big rock
you don't want rodents in here feeling like they just hit paydirt
so the last step I'll take and I'm not gonna do this today because it's so gosh
darn miserable is I'm gonna cover up that area with some mulch you know I
want to try to prevent it from over freezing too much also again discourage
rodent activity and we'll go from there you guys might have seen the video where
I took a whole bunch of cider pulp and poured it out here I'm hoping to sprout
a bunch of apple trees next year right here in this spot and what I'll be doing
in this spot here is actually planting all of those chestnut seeds that you
just saw me bury I'm gonna dig them up and put them in the ground as soon as I
can get a shovel into the ground and the hard frost is broken you don't want to
wait too long because when the chestnut seed sprouts it gets a little tail that
tail has a little bit of a risk of breaking and if you break that you're
gonna kill the plant but I will be planting them all through here and I
will let them grow for probably one or two years and just continue to plant
them out into our permaculture orchard and so that is how you make your own
chestnut trees it's really easy I encourage anyone to give it a shot it's
worth a little bit of effort you can do it two different ways again you can do
it the way you just saw me do here today or you can do it in your refrigerator
watch this video to see that or watch this video to learn more about our farm
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