“~ 9 + Bey 
the length of growing season and care given them. 
In general, the more vigorous 1 year old tree is the 
best selection for orchard planting as a seedling 
while the grafted tree should have a 1 year old top 
on a root system not over 3 years old. 
The site for the orchard should be well drained 
and have good soil fertility. Planting distances 
vary from a 25x25 foot spacing to a 50x50 foot 
spacing. Some growers prefer a 25x00 or even a 
30x60 foot spacing. With all the closer spacing acre 
yields will build up most rapidly but thinning of 
the stand of trees will be necessary at from 10 to 
20 years of age, depending upon the growth of the 
trees. 
Chinese chestnut seedling trees of the best 
strains, if well grown, will come into bearing on 
the average about five years from the planting of 
the nuts. Many grafted trees will bloom in the 
nursery row the same year the graft is made. 
Care of the Chinese chestnut orchard should 
follow generally recommended orchard practices in 
the locality. These will vary from South to Nerth 
and from the Atlantic Coast inland to the mountain- 
ous regions and to the Plains States of the Midwest. 
Use of adequate amounts of commercial fertilizers 
and green manure crops together with cultivation 
in sufficient amounts to keep competition for food 
materials and moisture at a minimum, is generally 
advisable. 
The young trees are best trained to a single 
trunk with the lowest branches at a sufficient height 
to permit all necessary operations under them. 
Little or no pruning is required after the first three 
or four years when the tree is being trained. 
Harvesting is accomplished by picking up the 
nuts after they have dropped naturally. Exposure 
to heat and drying, if left too long on the ground 
after dropping, quickly causes spoilage which unfits 
them for eating. In some northern areas control of 
the chestnut weevil by a hot water treatment is ad- 
visable after the nuts are gathered. In orchards of 
commercial size the cold storage of nuts immediately 
after gathering permits marketing over a longer 
period. Mechanical aids to harvesting are being 
developed but are not yet generally available so 
that most of the work must still be done by hand. 
The harvest period for any one seedling tree 
or variety will seldom extend over more than a 
ten day period. However, a number of seedling 
trees or two or more varieties may increase the 
over all harvest period to four or five weeks. 
The relative merit of seedling and grafted trees 
for orchard planting is not yet decided. It is a fact 
that no horticultural crop has made much progress 
until superior varieties have been made available. 
Several good varieties of the Chinese chestnut are 
being propagated now but the planting of seedlings 
still continues due to too high a percentage of graft 
union failures in the past. However, experimental 
work has shown that good graft unions can be ob- 
tained if seedling root stocks of the same strains 
as the varieties being propagated are used. Thus, 
variety plantings can now be made with good as- 
surance of success provided the varieties are propa- 
gated on the proper root stocks. Few nurseries can 
now supply such trees but their numbers will in- 
crease as time passes. 
