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As many here know, this past September as part of a family vacation, my family and I traveled to Virginia Tech. There we participated in the harvest of potentially blight resistant, pure American chestnuts. For our efforts, we were given a sack full of unopened burrs. From the instant those burrs came into my possession, our vacation became ruled by a single minded focus on protecting the seeds contained in those burrs. Even while touring Joel Salatin's Polyface farm, my mind never strayed very far from their safety. While climbing Chimney Rock, my mind frequently turned to the safety of my seeds. Like a man possessed, I guarded them.

Once home, the process began to stimulate the burrs to open. They were kept dark, in a large feed sack along with a damp cloth to increase the humidity. As the burrs opened, the seeds were removed, placed in dampened peat moss inside of perforated plastic baggies and put in the bottom of our fridge. Every Sunday from then till recently, each bag was pulled out, opened for a moment to facilitate air exchange, resealed and returned to the fridge.

Along about 11-1-12, Ms. Lucille Griffin who is the president of the American Chestnut Cooperators Foundation sent a letter stating that after giving out seeds to all cooperating growers, she had some left over and asked if they could be of use to me. I lunged at the opportunity to increase our seed bank. Sometime around the 1st of December, 83 additional seeds were received in the mail. Coupled with the 106 we had de-burred earlier in the year, we had 189 seeds in cold stratification.

On about 1-1-13, all then-available 3-gallon pots were filled with Mel's mix and in each pot, a single seed was placed. Forty-eight all total were potted up on that first day and placed outdoors on the north side of our house to allow them to germinate on their own schedule. Twenty-four more were potted up today for a total of 72 so far.

Earlier today, while out feeding the geese, I noticed that the superior surface of one of the seeds had been exposed by the massive amount of recent rain we've received. The seed was gently extracted. My heart swelled with fatherly pride upon seeing a radicle less than an inch long had declared that a potential life has been realized.

The plan is to continue to pot up each seed individually until all have a unique home. There they will be allowed to grow for at least a year under protected cultivation. After they are deemed ready to transplant, they will each be put into their permanent home with every ounce of protection that my wallet and back can provide.

This thread will chronicle the lives of these 189 seeds wherever that may lead.

Congratulation George, you have done a great job of nurturing the seeds along. It is wonderful to see life starting to grow from the seeds. I hope you get a very good germination rate. It sounds to me that you have done every thing in your power to give them the right start. I await the results, I am sure you will give us all the details as things progress.

That is great news, George.

Plus 26 more makes 98. This batch was put into stratification on 10-03-12 and about half had barely germinated.

That's great news George, nearly a hundred. That is a lot of trees to plant, and a lot of growing space needed. Good luck with the chestnuts.

Bone headed mistake of the month: Put Mel's Mix into the pots for the chestnut seeds without packing it down.

Result: Pots that appeared full of soil, after a good rain, actually were only half full.

Corrective action: CAREFULLY extract every single seed, put in additional, well packed soil and replant.

Unexpected benefit of bone-headedness: Visual conformation of 100% germination rate.

You can't do better than 100%, that is fantastic. You obviously know your stuff when it comes to germinating nut seeds.

Today we potted up 58 more. These were ones we received in the mail from the ACCF which were left-over after all other cooperating growers had had their orders satisfied. This second batch was placed into stratification around 12-1-12 and most of them had germinated. Fortunately, none had radicles of sufficient length to have come into contact with the plastic bag they were being held in. Now There are about 25 left to go. We were unable to finish because we ran out of Mel's Mix. I'll have to come by the Co-Op in the next day or two and pick up some more materials to finish the job.

That said, we opted to trial the use of "grow bags" for this bunch. Grow bags serve the same purpose as nursey pots but are far less expensive costing only something like $0.46/bag. They seemed to work fine but are definitely not as resilient as the pots are. Currently they sit on our concrete porch. I'm afraid they are too fragile to be placed onto anything except a smooth surface or something very soft like a carpet of grass. My original goal was to use Root Maker pots but they were prohibitively expensive relative to our finances at the time. Had I been able to delay a month or two to recover from the Christmas hit, we'd a been fine. But then that's life.

I am envious of how many Chestnuts you are planting. I truly hope that these seeds prove to be Blight resistant when the trees start to mature in 20 years. I understand about the Christmas finances thing, Life does tend to get in the way of our plans for living at times. But in the end it does turn out to be Our Life after all, Its the only life we have, so enjoy it while it Lasts.

The last of the chestnuts were potted up today. None too soon either for almost all of them had germinated in the fridge. I thought there were twenty-five of them left but instead there was twenty three. A quick count today revealed that we ended up with 185. I thought I had 189. Don't know where them other four got off to. Oh well.

Now for the hard parts - waiting, and keeping the kids from destroying any. Sword fights have a way of getting out of hand. To wit, 'twas sword fighting that converted my Comice pear from a central leader to a modified central leader here a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, this job is now over and the timing could t have been more perfect for just as the chestnut potting has ended, walnut planting is about to commence. Over the next two weekends, if all goes as planned, our attention will transition towards black walnuts which will likely dominate the rest of the winter.

Guy, if understood correctly these trees should express blight resistance at a rate of about 20%. If true, and if all 185 are successfully planted out and make it to maturity, thirty-seven of them should be relatively immune to the blight.

Also, from what I understand, chestnuts come into bearing very early relative to most trees. If memory serves, they should be producing seeds in 5-7 years. Hopes are that the trees derived from the first generation will show even greater blight resistance than these.