BOOM! 92Nuts in the ground! What kind of nuts? Chestnuts of course. Courtesy of my father who, inspired by my interest in Chestnuts, sent me a box of about 100 chestnuts. Ready to plant. Just stick them in the ground.

You may be thinking, "I've seen chestnuts. They are in those little spikey husks right?" Well.... Yes. But you probably are thinking of Horse Chestnuts. These are American Chestnuts. One you can eat, one you can NOT. American Chestnuts look like sea urchins in trees and there are three huge nuts to a pods. Horse Chestnuts are like spiky little ping pong balls with only one sad little nut.

These are the first "official" thing planted by me here. To plant an entire row requires some thought. I have a definite thing for chestnuts. They are an amazing tree with an equally amazing history. Naturally ranging from the south in Mississippi all the way up with the Appalachian Mountains to Maine, 1 in 4 trees was a huge American Chestnut. That amounted to about 4 billion trees, but in 1904 a strange disease was notice in the Bronx Zoo on the trees. It turned out to be a chestnut blight inadvertently introduced with Chinese Chestnut imported trees. Within a few decades its estimated 99% of the Chestnuts died, taking with it entire animal populations that relied on the abundance of chestnuts for food.

So coming back to the present, there has been a lot of exciting work that never stopped since the onset of the chestnut blight. For many decade, most efforts were just slow going or failures. Now various groups have either had elaborate crossbreeding programs to develop disease resistance or have taken the approach of modern genetics to develop that resistance.

These chestnuts I planted are a hybrid between American and Chinese Chestnuts. While they are probably not from one of the big nationally recognized breeding programs, they are still a very important piece to the puzzle of bringing back the chestnuts to country. The more disease resistance AND genetic variety that can be preserved will be needed in the future. Small private orchards have just the same ability as large sponsored groups to develop unique plants. I fully intend to carry on that concept.

Dr. William A. Powell received his BS in biology in 1982 at Salisbury State University, MD, and his PhD in 1986 at Utah State University studying the molecular mechanisms of hypovirulence in the chestnut blight fungus, Cryphonectria parasitica.

These are just the first of many chestnuts, other nut trees, fruit trees, shrubs, bushes, and berries. The more the better. Whatever don't get used directly on the farm will keep all the little woodland creatures happy. With more cultivars, there is more potential to create something that is new; bigger, better, stronger. The chestnut is a great starting place for the farm. This area most likely once had chestnuts growing here. Why not return them? Its a win win for the farm and for the ecosystem.

There were once almost 4 billion American chestnuts and they were among the largest, tallest, and fastest-growing trees in the eastern forest. The wood was long-lasting, straight-grained, and suitable for furniture, fencing, and building. The nuts fed billions of birds and animals.

If you are interested in Chestnuts, you should definitely Google & YouTube the heck out of them!

The American Chestnut Foundation is a great place to start.

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Ahhhh, Nuts