american chestnut blight resistant trees for sale

Dunstan chestnut trees have been grown successfully from Maine and New York, west to Illinois and Wisconsin, and south to east Texas and Florida. Thank you, chestnut lovers, for your encouragement.Plant Zones 8-9: November – early Decemberįor more information see the Ordering & Shipping section below.ĭunstan Chestnut™ seedling trees are the best and most widely planted chestnut trees in America – they combine the excellent nut quality and tree form with blight resistance. It is our hope that once again there will be tens of thousands of acres of chestnut trees across our continent saving soil, sequestering carbon, cooling the earth, and feeding our children's children.

Few Americans remember how prevalent chestnuts once were across the eastern U.S. Our customers, by their enthusiasm for healthy, American-grown, organic chestnuts, are participating in the restoration of a near-lost food culture. The Goal of Restoration of Chestnuts in the U.S. We are always on the lookout for that exceptional tree that may become the go-to cultivar for the next generation plantation. Generally, our Chinese species and Chinese hybrid trees prosper the best and produce good chestnuts. Inferior trees and trees that produce bad-tasting chestnuts are removed as we find them, or they are top-worked to better cultivars. Each chestnut tree has an “address” on the farm and a record of source and crop evaluations. Charlie tracks our trees grown from different seed sources and different grafted cultivars. On the other hand, Kansas climate is harsh and the soils are more alkaline-nobody knows which chestnut trees will prosper here in the long run. Kansas is outside the native range of chestnuts so the orchard is spared some of the usual pests, such as weevils, that infest chestnuts in eastern states. Our tree project now has approximately 1500 nut trees under organic culture within the protective buffer.Ĭhestnuts in Kansas-an Experiment in Progress The tree project is surrounded by conventional corn/soybean farms so we planted and maintain a buffer/shelterbelt of mixed tree species around the perimeter boundary.

Being organic is Charlie’s uncompromising condition to farming-that he contribute no synthetic chemicals to the environment. Chestnut Charlie’s has been certified organic since 1998. But Charlie thought that with farm-grown blight-resistant and hybrid chestnuts we might help restore healthy organic chestnuts to the American dinner table.Ĭharlie started planting chestnut trees on the 20-acre field in 1995, following organic practices from the beginning. (see this Ted talk by our friend, Hill Craddock, link is below) Restoring the wild chestnut forests to North America will not soon be done.

Breeding blight resistant hybrid chestnut trees is the restoration mission of the American Chestnut Foundation. As Smith was writing, the American chestnut, the dominant tree of the eastern U.S., was being wiped out by an introduced fungal blight. Russell Smith, who, in his 1929 book, Tree Crops, a Permanent Agriculture, advocated replacing soil-eroding annual crops with permanent tree crops, including chestnuts. Chestnuts looked like a promising alternative tree crop, with healthy nutrition, that could be grown organically.Ĭharlie had read J. Charlie saw this as an opportunity to start an organic project which would be pesticide free, environmentally healing, healthy, wholesome and sustainable. In the early 1990s a 20-acre field with Class-1 Kansas River bottom soil came up for sale just north of Lawrence, Kansas. Neither of us are from a farming background but we share a passion for trees, nature, and health food. If you contact Chestnut Charlie’s, you will be talking to either Charlie NovoGradac or Debbie Milks.

American chestnut blight resistant trees for sale