How to germinate chestnut walnut?

Chestnuts have always been and remain the real "stars" of city parks and squares. These sprawling handsome men with their dense crown save people from the summer heat, delight them with beautiful spring flowering and thickly fill the ground with ripe hedgehogs in autumn. Independently to germinate, and then grow such a tree from nuts, it is possible both in the open field and at home. Let's tell how to do it.

Selection and preparation of chestnuts

The selection of fruits for planting is very simple - in the fall, under the closest chestnut you like, where by that time there will be a rich selection of ripened and fallen nuts in the prickly skin. For planting selected specimens without mechanical damage and signs of decay.

In the open ground

Planting chestnut in open ground can be made in the fall and spring. Autumn planting will require pre-treatment of the selected fruits by stratification.

This procedure is keeping the nuts in the cold. They are put in a box, sprinkled with sand and placed in a refrigerator for 10-14 days. The optimum temperature is + 5-6 ° C.

After this preparation, the nuts can be planted in the ground. Landing is made in the furrows with a depth of 5-6 cm, which are abundantly watered. Nuts are placed in them at a distance of 12-15 cm from each other and sprinkled with earth. Then you do not need to do anything, under favorable circumstances, sprouts will appear in May.

For spring planting, selected nuts are put in a container, poured with sand and placed for the winter in a refrigerator or in a cool place (cellar), where they are kept at a temperature of + 5-6 ° С.

When it comes to planting time, nuts are placed for 5 days in warm water, which is periodically changed.

Then, when the weather is sufficiently warm, swollen fruits are planted into the ground at a depth of 3-5 cm and wait for the sprouts.

At home

Planting and germinating chestnut walnut at home is quite simple. Selected nuts in the autumn are kept at home until the temperature outside the window is close to zero. Store nuts preferably in a cool place, for example on a glassed-in balcony, placing them in a canvas bag.

At the onset of cold weather, we shift the nuts into a suitable container, sprinkling them with moistened sand. If there are a lot of nuts, they can be laid in layers, sanding each layer with sand. After laying the planting material capacity is placed in the refrigerator.

Usually by the end of February the nuts swell, some may even burst and release sprouts. In this case, the planting material is transferred to the container with the ground and sprinkled.The thickness of the soil in such a container should be no more than 5 cm. In open ground, seedlings are planted after unfolding their leaves. Sometimes gardeners prefer to keep them at home longer. In some cases, the shoots of trees are transplanted into pots and grown for the first two years at home.

At the same time, for the winter, the pots are transferred to a dark cool room, brought to light in the spring, and in the summer to the open air.

Sprouted Nut Planting

The place where the chestnut will grow constantly should be light, but inaccessible to direct sunlight. In addition, within a radius of about three meters from the seedling there should be no other plantings, as over time, an adult tree will crush all competitors around it. The tree prefers loamy soil, which contains lime. If the soil at the site of planting is not very suitable for chestnut, it is mixed with the appropriate substrate, for example, sand can be added to heavy clay soil.

For planting dig a hole, the depth of which must match the size of the root system of the seedling, and its diameter exceeds one and a half times.

The seedling is removed from the container in which he ascended, together with the earth clod, and placed in a prepared hole. Free space is filled with soil, the surface is mulched with peat, humus or chips.

Chestnut care

Planted tree needs care. Chestnut care is easy, but without these actions, the seedling will almost certainly die.

Watering

Young chestnut must be watered regularly, this procedure is especially important in the hot period. After watering the soil around the trunk mulch.

Over time, when the matured tree forms a strong root system, the need for regular watering will disappear.

Usually chestnut becomes self-sufficient after 10 years of development.

Fertilizer

Fertilizing a young tree is made twice a year. In the spring it is watered with a specially prepared solution, in which 10 l of water contains a kilogram of cow manure and 15 g of urea.

In the fall, the tree is watered with a solution of nitroammophoska (15 g of fertilizer per 10 liters of water). It is advisable to feed the tree for the first ten years, in the future it develops normally and without top dressing.

Support

If in the place where the sapling is planted there are strong winds, its trunk must be tied to a support. Otherwise, the fragile so far the trunk can not resist the strong gusts of wind and just break.

Pruning

For the formation of a lush crown pruned trees are pruned. It is usually made in spring. In this case, the upper branches are cut off by about a quarter. Pruning is carried out annually, until the chestnut becomes too high and the desired crown is formed. Later on, pruning is limited to cutting off dried and damaged branches, with an excessively thick crown, thin it out, cutting off the thinnest branches. At the same time, cut-off areas are covered with garden pitch.

As we have seen, it is not difficult to germinate a chestnut from a nut, but in the future the sprout will need careful, albeit simple, care.The reward for the efforts will be a beautiful tree, under the dense crown of which many generations will save themselves from the heat, so it lives for an average of 350 years.