Spring is quickly turning into summer in Northern California. As the farming has picked up, our blogging pace has fallen off. So, this update will share how our chestnut orchard has been coming along since the trees broke dormancy.
We're going to focus on the issues we've encountered in the early part of the season. There will be no "fishing stories" here! We've included a few glamor shots of healthy trees at the end, but the bulk of this post will be on the problems we're working through in the hope that it helps other growers.
We'd also love input from others, so comment if you have ideas we should consider or other things we should watch out for. There are many things that we know we don't know, so we appreciate others helping us "know" them!
OK, let's get to it. First up, are a few pictures with dates to show how quickly the cover crop went from a beautiful green, to a dead brown.
April 6th, 2025
April 17th
May 13th
By May 22nd the cover was 95% dead.
The following week, we ran a 10-foot disc lightly across the cover on each side of the tree rows to knock down the cover. We did this to reduce the habitat for bugs (especially grasshoppers which can really take over in the summer), and smooth out the rows which are still very rough from last year's planting.
We were careful to not set the disc too deep into the soil. We've spent a lot of time and money trying to build soil organic matter and encourage the native life in the soil to thrive. Too much tillage can hurt that virtuous cycle, so a quick rough pass was all that's needed.
We'll re-seed with a pollinator friendly, soil building cover again this fall. Hopefully, we'll see a similar amount of growth in the cover next winter and spring.... And with fewer grasses and more brassicas/legumes this time.
Heat Damage & Irrigation Misses
A nice spring turned quickly into a hot pre-summer as temperatures reached the high 80's in April and into the 90's in the first week of May. Meanwhile, we were fighting to get our solar irrigation pump online and work out all the kinks in the system. This led to us not irrigating enough in those early hot days and some of the trees suffered.
Thankfully, most of the trees were fine, just didn't put on as much growth as they could have. The worst 5% of the trees took visible damage as show in the images below.
You can see in each of these pictures that the trees are pushing new growth from below the burned leaves / stems. It's been hard to see them suffer like this, but the lesson has been learned, we're grateful we didn't lose any trees. We're now in full irrigation season.
Rebar Damage
Our farm is on the top of a set of rolling hills. It is surrounded by grassland, so the wind regularly blows at ~20 miles per hour. This further stresses the trees, increases their transpiration, and causes them to bang against their stakes once they extend beyond their tube. Some of the trees that have a combination of a short grow tube (<36") and a rebar stake appear to be taking damage from this friction with the stake. You can see this in the image below, and you can see from the color of this tree that it is suffering from the heat and too little irrigation.
We have not seem similar damage on trees that are using the Plantra stakes. Maybe that means it's the heat of the rebar causing the tree damage not the rubbing, or maybe it's the ribs on the rebar doing the damage as the tree sways in the wind.
Green Plant Bug
The little bug show in the picture below started showing up in late April. They weren't on every tree, and it wasn't clear how much damage they we're doing (vs. what was being caused by heat), but to get ahead of them we sprayed an insecticide and some organic kelp on each tree. A few days later all the bugs were gone. Hopefully the kelp gave the trees a little foliar nutrition boost. We'll never know for sure if the kelp helped, but it's very low cost and easy to add to the mix since we were making a spray pass anyway.
Deer
Finally, everyone chestnut growers' dreaded deer damage. Fewer than 10 of the 900 trees we planted last fall have noticeable deer damage. About half of those 900 trees have been growing above their tubes for the last couple of weeks, so we're pretty pleased so far that we've only had a few browsed by deer.
The tree below has received the trifecta: heat, rebar, and deer damage. Thankfully, it's pushing healthy new growth despite these punches. Trees like this will likely take some additional shaping to get to the right long-term structure, but hopefully the damage it took this spring is just a minor setback.
That's the full rap sheet of issues so far... It's been a rough start, but we're impressed by the resilience of the trees and are working to get a little better everyday.
Thanks for following along! Here are a couple pictures of some of the trees that have avoided all the issues above and are thriving as a reward for reading to the end.
