Chestnut

Description

Chestnut trees are an incredible tree crop for your homestead! The chestnuts grown by Honey Badger Nursery are a mix of Chinese, American and European genetics as best we can tell, with the parent trees reaching 60-80 feet tall and 40-60 feet wide.

These long-lived trees have a majestic quality to them. They appreciate good drainage, mildy acidic soil, and are drought hardy once established. Chestnuts, unlike oaks and some other mast-producing trees, produce a steady crop year in and year out. They are deciduous and produce a nice arrangement of fall colors during harvest season.

These chestnuts look like dark amber jewels when they emerge from their spiny protective burr. Immensely flavorful, they are quite sweet when roasted, and can be made into flours, fillings, crusts, stuffings and of course be eaten immediately after roasting! As they ripen and the burrs split, the nuts will either fall out of or be easily removed from the shell with a boot heel, and can often be picked up bare handed. A favorite of pigs the world round, chestnuts are an excellent choice for fattening autumn hogs on the tidal wave of perennial carbohydrates they produce. Deer, turkeys, squirrels and other wildlife also take advantage of the seasonal abundance provided by the chestnut tree.

These chestnut trees are said to grow best in USDA Zones 4-8, though we have harvested from 150 year old trees in USDA Zone 9b and the trees are thriving.

Our chestnut trees are grown in air prune beds that stimulate the growth of healthy, highly branched root structures with none of the circling or girdling (and consequent stunted growth) characteristic of trees grown in slick-walled plastic pots.