The first chestnut orchard planting update we wrote in January covered the basics of the trees, cover crop, and how we measured and planted the 50% of our orchard that is Colossal. The balance of the orchard will be a mix of pollenizers (like Okei, Gillet, Torakuri, etc.) and will be planted later this year as those trees are ready from the nursery.
Here, we'll give more details on the spacing & tree tube trials, and share some of the initial tree height data we're going to use as a baseline to see how the trees perform this year. Spring is coming fast in Sacramento, which means the real farming fun will soon begin!
Final Colossal Layout
We planted every other row with Colossals in late December/early January. Below is the layout on the farm now. The yellow rows are Colossal, the blue-green rows are empty now and will be planted later this year.
The rows are 20 feet apart, so right now, it's 40 feet between planted rows. We planted the majority of the rows on 20-foot in-row spacing, but planted 5 rows in the middle of the orchard at double density, 10-foot in-row spacing. As you can see in the picture below, this is very close.
We'll have to remove most of these trees in a few years, but want to see how this high-density spacing does alongside more typical spacings.
The hope is that having 2x the trees per acre will result in higher yields in the first few years of production and more than pay for the additional planting & tree costs. Most of the farming practices (mowing, spraying, compost spreading, etc.) will occur down the whole length of the rows, so the number of trees in each row doesn't dramatically change the on-going costs... just the initial ones.
Initial Tree Heights
We measured the height of each tree in Row 9 before they started to push new growth. We'll measure them again next winter to see how much vertical growth each tree put on this year. Below are the individual measurements.
We chose this row as the one to measure since it has such a wide-range of tree heights at planting. Some of the trees are 3x as tall as others at the time of planting! I suspect that the small tree will close that gap very quickly this year.... we will see.
Most of these trees are also smaller than those we sell to customers. When we ship bare root trees to other growers, we typically send them around 30" tall. It'll be interesting to see how tall these little guys and gals get by November.
Tree Tube Trials
As mentioned in the first Chestnut Orchard Planting Post, we're trying a whole bunch of different tree tubes to see which perform the best. We used most of the shorter tubes on the high density rows and the taller ones in other parts of the orchard. We made sure to do full rows of each so that it's easy to have side-by-side comparisons of the trees that are growing in each tube height.
~95% of the tubes we're using are Plantra's. They're the industry standard for chestnuts and have been pleased with both their tubes and stakes so far during planting. The other ~5% of tubes are a short, blue spray-shield type tubes. These will serve as a control.
As winter transitioned into spring, we've already made a few observations about the various tubes:
- The taller the tube, the more wind it catches (duh)... and, in worked-up wet soil, they lean. See first picture below
- Rebar is less expensive than the Plantra tubes, but also heavier, less stable in the soil on tall tubes, and even even prone to bending in high enough wind. See second picture below
- The Plantra tubes do see to be having a slight greenhouse effect on the trees 99% of the chestnuts in the Plantra tubes had put out their first leaves by the end of March, whereas the trees in the short blue tubes we're just starting to break buds. See third & forth pictures below taken the last week of March
Don't Forget About the Cover Crop
The seed we broadcast prior to planting this winter is taking off in some places and struggling in others. This is likely due to how much soil and moisture contact the seed had in the various parts of the orchard. It's disappointing to see the relatively weak take rate of the seed in the parts of the orchard with the best soils. However, it's great to see the cover exploding in the rocky parts of the farm. The seed was able to tuck in between the fractured rock in these areas and is now adding tons of organic matter to slowly build these rough soils. God bless radishes!
Here's the cover at the end of February.
And at the end of March.
