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This newsletter highlights the efforts to bring permaculture to every faucet of agriculture. The more permaculture is part of our agriculture, the better off we all will be.
What is in this newsletter?
- Spotlight: Instant food plot - 4 yr old ZCC chestnut – Pick up only
- Chestnut trees- UMCA®PQK 1 and 2 year Old trees
- New hazelnut cultivar “W58” Needs a name.
- Inventory typo = 20% off – Cortland seedlings we have 1000 more than we listed?
- Hazelnuts Seeds – They are ready to plant – Lowest cost way to have improved hazelnut seedlings.
- ZCC instant food plot - Wild Life Food Plot Heaven = Deer Candy! Pick up only as these are now 4 years ole and very big! This is the tree for feeding wildlife. Nuts drop early October to fatten up deer, bear and turkey for the winter. Some trees had nuts last year!
ZCC Chinese chestnut is desired for its hardiness, disease resistance and of course their nuts. You can eat fresh or make your own gluten free deliciously sweet flour. The nuts fall free to the ground. All you have to do is pick them up. Our ZCC mother tree regularly produces 100 pounds of nuts in good years. These are regionally proven trees to grow in the Northeast. Please see our web pages on chestnuts to learn more. These are from locally grown and adapted Chinese chestnut trees on our farm. So, you know if they can grow at our windy elevation of USDA zones 4B/5A they will grow in yours. Try in zones 4a. Dormant trees are 50" to 108" tall when picked up. When they mature at 25 years, they are about 25 to 30 feet tall and 25 feet wide. These nuts are typical of many Chinese chestnuts and are on the smaller size of orchard chestnuts. These are tasty, sweet nuts! If you ask us, they taste like a sweet pistachio. We also have 2 year old ZCC big trees that we can ship if you can’t come to our nursery.
Orchard Chestnut Trees- UMCA® PQK One year and two year seedlings named UMCA® PQK are Chinese chestnut hybrids bred for productivity, blight resistance, and adaptability. As Chinese chestnut hybrids (Castanea mollissima), they are hardy in USDA zones 4–8, with proven performance in trials across the eastern U.S., including colder areas like zone 5a in Missouri and the Midwest. Meaning, great for the Northeast! This is why we are honored to sell UMCA® PQK seedlings.
The University of Missouri Horticulture and Agroforestry Research Center ("HARC") chestnut grove is considered one of the best sources of hybrid chestnuts, as their grove of chestnuts contains some of the best chestnut tree cultivars available. Included among these cultivars are the mother trees that generate UMCA® PQK seedling trees. These UMCA® seedling trees descend from three high performing grafted cultivars: Peach, Qing, and Kohr, which are crossed via a controlled pollen cloud in an isolated grafted orchard at HARC. UMCA® PQK seedlings will pollinate each other and you need at least two trees.
One-year Trees as little as $10 and includes the royalty!
Information about the parentage of the PQK hybrid seedlings:
Peach: A large-nutted, high-yielding Chinese American hybrid known for excellent nut quality and flavor.
Qing: A pure Chinese chestnut (Castanea mollissima) selected in China for very early nut drop, precocity (bears young), and high yields.
Kohr: A Chinese American hybrid selected for large nut size, good flavor, and strong blight resistance.
We also have two year old PQK seedlings that are extra large and can have nuts in as little as two years.
New Cultivar presently called “W58” needs a name!
Can nuts be too big? In the orchard we do controlled pollinations, grow many out, remove ones we don’t like and grow the remaining trees. After 12+ years we are ready to announce new cultivar(s). We are proud to announce W58. W58 isn’t a name but a reference we use to identify the tree. W58 needs a name and we are asking you to help us name it. Looking at the picture below you can get a few ideas, as the size of the nut seems almost too big and the shell is quite thin. The tree is very productive and less than 8 feet tall after 12+ years. The pellicle is almost transparent or almost nonexistent. Should we select your name suggestion we will happily post your effort on our website and send you a free W58 when they become available. Send your naming idea to: info@znutty.com
Cortland Seedlings - Sometimes stuff happens and you just have to grin and bear it. We were off by 1000 trees when posting inventory to our web site. We wanted to highlight Cortland seedlings as we still have plenty to sell and the window is closing soon. So, we discounted pricing up to 20% to move them fast.
Cortland is the seedling name of our cultivar NITKA®. Nuts from the mother tree are round, beautiful, tasty and very thin shell that you can often crack by squeezing two in your hand. The nuts are well filled and a very short husk that allows the nuts to fall freely. Cortland grows upright with stiffer branches to 10+ feet tall at maturity and about 6-7 feet wide in bush form at 25 years of age. The mother tree is a very good producer in our field and very blight resistant (immune so far) after over 25 years. Also, a wind tolerant excellent pollen producer with a long pollen shed. Good for Zone 4b and warmer. Try in Zone 3!
Of course, offspring develop characteristics that reveal themselves as they grow. Many seedlings will have the same thin shell that NITKA® is known for. Cortland seedlings will pollinate each other and need two trees minimum to produce nuts.
Prodigy, NITKA and Cultivar seeds– low cost way to start your own hazelnut trees. Seeds are stratified and ready to grow.
When developing new hazelnut cultivars for our colder regions there is a lot of effort and over 12 years of watching to know if a tree is worth propagating. From bagging flowers on your best trees and then collecting pollen from your best trees and hand pollinating, to taking care of them for 12 plus years to see how they handle different winters, springs, drought, wet periods, production, shell quality, disease and finally nut quality. We are now we offering Prodigy seeds from our breeding efforts from some of the best trees to you.
In fact, we believe that our Prodigy nuts have the desired European quality with the cold hardy and disease resistance needed for the Northeast.
NITKA© seeds: NITKA© seeds are from only one beautiful mother tree that has outstanding nuts and very good production almost every year. The nuts are medium to large with a very thin shell. Even the shell is beautiful. Most of the resulting seedlings we call “Cortland seedlings” often will have the same thin smooth shell from our experience. We are fairly sure the nut stretches the shell to make it so smooth and thin. The mother tree is what we call NITKA©. The mother tree we are sure is good in USDA Zone 4a and try in 3b as the genetics come from zone 3b.
Cultivar seeds: Also, an important genetic improvement is our Cultivar seeds. We layered (a.k.a. cloned) our best trees and put them into a separate orchard and are selling the resulting seeds to you. These seeds may produce our next generation super star hazelnut trees.
