My chestnut complete protein food forest trees thriving after five years of growth without me!! Still thriving seven years later!

 

 Here they are in 2017 when we sold our previous 10 acres where I planted over a dozen Chestnut trees (that survived the deer and cold, etc.)

Those same Chestnut trees five years later in 2023!

 

 Wow some of those baby trees were BARELY VISIBLE in 2017 when we sold our land/house but now they are clearly visible - !! They have not only survived but thrived!! The new owners were excited about those trees since they provide great food for deer - but it's also a complete protein as great human food as well!!

My goal was to create food trees and indeed I did!! You can't eat money but you can eat food!!

 yes I see a dozen large Chestnut trees! They were just starting to provide chestnuts when we sold in 2018.  So whether the new owners harvest the chestnuts or not - the squirrels and deer will eat the chestnut complete protein food.

Even Wild Turkey eat chestnuts!!

I am very happy with the work I put in  -  at first I lost trees to cold and deer browsing. I put in irrigation hose to do drip irrigation - at the recommendation of a neighboring relative. That way I didn't have to carry out water. I did fertilizer and put in big fences to keep out the deer so the trees were protected.

The trees have to cross-pollinate to produce chestnuts but since some already were and clearly they are big enough now to cross pollinate! Wow. 

The work paid off and it's very exciting!!

 Rutter figures it's a 10-year wait before a tree starts producing nuts. "They'll start to produce flowers when they're 3," he said. "But you don't get good pollination until you've got big trees to really spread pollen out over things."

If you go to googlemaps for this years image it is two years later and so the growth is even better for those trees!! Before it was just a field - now it is a thriving food forest. I first planted these trees around 2014.... so it's been about 10 years.