Hi, this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment
we're going to talk about how to grow chestnuts. Now chestnuts are a wonderful, wonderful nut
that is used in many different ways. And you can roast them an open fire at Christmastime
and enjoy them with a little bit of butter on them. They taste so good. And they're known
in all different cultures, they're used in China and the Middle East and chestnuts have
been around for a long time. And they're really easy to grow as well. So chestnuts are just
like any other nut. When they drop out of the trees in the fall they stay under the
ground, and then when it warms up in the spring they just break apart and the plant comes
right out of the nut, and it's quite amazing, and it doesn't need a lot of help in any way
from us. So they're easy to grow either from a nut or you can grow them already as a rooted
tree. And you can find them at most garden centers and nurseries, most times of the year,
and usually they're planted in the winter or the spring, but you can pretty much plant
them any time of the year. They're a beautiful tree to have in your garden and I really have
enjoyed mine, and I enjoy watching the squirrels grab the nuts and put them all over my property
and then I've got little chestnut trees growing all over. But you can just dig those back
up and pot them up and they grow into beautiful trees on their own. So when you buy them bare
rooted or in a pot, when transplanting them, make sure the stem is out of the ground and
the root is covered up. They need full hot sun to grow and lots of water in the wintertime,
and watering here and there in the summertime if they're a small tree. Once the trees are
established you don't have to water them at all, they'll come back every year and grow
really well, they lose all their leaves in the fall, and then they grow new leaves in
the spring so they're deciduous. And chestnuts are just like any other fruit tree, or nut
tree, and you just plant them in a sunny spot and give them a few years to really get going.
And you can enjoy the chestnuts for many years.