The Western Chestnut

by Lucienne Grunder

The cultivars I have observed and evaluated over the last few years all grow at Owl Creek Ranch, about 100 miles due East of San Francisco, where the Sierra foothills just barely start rising.

The climate is Mediterranean, with virtually no rain from May to November. The annual rainfall adds up to about 16 inches. That means we have to "cheat" and add about 36 inches of irrigation water all through the summer months. We have some frost from December to February with temperatures not dipping below 25°F.

Most of our cultivars are European/Japanese hybrids, planted from E/J seeds in 1998, mostly from bags of Italian imported chestnuts of mixed parentage, Colossal and Marsol.

Over time we budded/grafted almost all of the seedlings to various cultivars. In the beginning the only easily obtainable grafting wood was Colossal. About 1/3 of the 9000 chestnut trees in the orchard are Colossal. I call them our bread and butter chestnuts; they produce well, and are mostly large and well liked.

And, there are many better tasting chestnuts ...

During the harvesting season we frequently have tastings, giving the nuts of various cultivars points for taste, ease of peeling, appearance and storage capability.

The table summarizes our findings and represents averages for the last 3 years. The best performing cultivars in our orchard are the first 6 on the list. We have grafted, bare root trees of all the listed cultivars available during planting season as well as some of a yet un-named cultivar which seems to grow into a tree suitable for timber production. Growing chestnut trees for timber is a long range proposition which should very seriously be considered, in my view. (The best performing cultivars in our orchard are the first 6 in bold).

Cultivar	Harvest	Nuts/lb	Marrone	Taste	Cross	Peel	Comment
Bouche de Betizac	9/5 - 9/20	15	y	v.good	E x J	v.easy	good for Central Valley
Marrissard	late	14-18	y	good	E x J	easy	good f.Central Valley, pollen sterile
Precoce Migoule	9/11 - 9/25	24-26	y	v.good	E x J	easy	pretty, striped nut
Belle Epine	med. - late	14-18	y	v.good	E	med	Marsol as pollenizer
Marron du Var	late	13-15	y	v.good	E x	easy	good storage
Marrone di Susa	very early	14-18	y	v.good	E	easy	candies well
Colossal	9/6 - 9/26	14 -18	n	ok	E x J	fair	pollen sterile
Okei	2/26 - 10/10	13-15	n	good		fair	great pollenizer
Fowler	9/27 - 10/10	20-28	n	good	E x	easy	pollen sterile, sticks in burr on tree
Montesol	10/5 - 10/20	13-20	n	sweet	ExJxC?	easy	sizes irregular
Marsol	9/5 - 9/20	17-19	n	good	E x J	easy	makes good seedlings
Prolific	9/27 -10/10	15-18	n	fair	E x J	fair	some branches over produced, had sm.Nuts
Eurabella/ Silverleaf	early	18-22	n	v.good	JxPumila	easy	good pollenizer
Bisalta	mid-late	22-25	n	fair	E x J	fair	very fruitful
Marki	mid-late	22-25	n	v.good	E x J	easy	best storage