Mississippi Chestnut Project

It was the story of the chestnut blight that drove my interest in tree diseases as an undergraduate at Mizzou.  As a child, I would listen to stories of the Old Country while watching my dad roast chestnuts over the stove. In the fall in the late 1960's in central Missouri, we'd drive to the Schnabel tract just outside Columbia, or down to Rosati, Mo. near Rolla to pick American chestnuts.  The trees at these two locations were remnants of planted trees that were slowly dying and giving us their last crop.  Who would have thought that – 50 years later – we would be bringing them back!

Starting in 1971, we picked some Chinese chestnuts off the Mary Plantation along the Mississippi River, in Braithwaite, Plaquemines Parish.  But, those trees and others I've seen around here were in poor condition and not thrifty. Perhaps Chinese trees are not suitable for our southern environment.  Perhaps, chestnut trees don't like the thick, wet, gumbo soils here.  Before the blight, chestnut ink disease, a Phytophthora was killing trees.  Phytophthora thrives in wet soils.  Then, I encountered Gerd Oppenheim at his Crane's Run Farm near Norwood, La., in East Feliciana Parish.  His Dunstan variety American x Chinese hybrids were 40 feet tall at 15 years and thrifty producers of nice, big nuts.   They were growing in an upland, Piedmont type soil.

I manage a 10 acre property in Poplarville, Ms. that has a small blueberry patch in it and plenty of open space.  In 2011 I drilled out over 200 holes on a 30 x 30 spacing.  The holes were 2 feet wide and pierced through the hard pan to a depth of 5 feet.  A bit of amended compost was mixed with the dirt and a chestnut tree planted in the spot.  Since Dunstans are expensive, I mixed in 5 other varieties of chestnut trees in a mixed array.  Since chestnut is self-sterile, cross pollination with a bigger diversity seems ideal.  A group of beehives was placed in the field to aid pollination.  In just 2 years, most of the trees are running 4 to 7 feet tall and about 4 inches caliper and we hope to get a crop soon.

Download a FREE copy of my pamphlet: My Chestnuts by Adrian Juttner (PDF, 4pp, 1,376KB)

Download a FREE copy of my pamphlet: "A Roasted Chestnut" (PDF, 3pp, 824KB)

In 2014, we noticed die-back of many trees. Symptoms were soda-straw bits of frass on the trunks. This is not Chestnut blight, but rather a new aggressive species of ambrosia beetle that attacks a wide variety of young trees. A trunk spray using a limited amount of pre-ban Lindane 20EC mixed with safety oil seemed to work somewhat. By the fall of 2015, re-appearance of the beetles and concern for the environment led us to try a biological treatment of Steinernema carpocapsae roundworms sprayed on the trunk and in the grass around each tree. This treatment completely suppressed new infestations of ambrosia beetles.

A few burs and nuts appeared on the Ohio Timber hybrid variety trees in . September 2015. Some of the trees of this variety, some Chinese and some Michigan resistant  Americans had reached a height of 10 feet.

CHESTNUT BLIGHT  – This nasty disease has reared its ugly head in Pearl River County, Mississippi after being dormant for 75 years.  Some of my "Michigan Resistant American" trees are presenting classical blight symptoms.  That is: canker, die-back and sprouting.  Cankers have classic pycnidial fruiting on them.  Most chestnut blight photos date from the 30's and the B&W photos of them are poor by modern standards.  I will try to get some good digital images soon.  This report  also indicates that "Michigan Resistant" trees are not really resistant after all.  I am replacing them with Chinese chestnuts.