Chinese chestnut trees bear fruit in several years

It takes about 4-8 years for chestnut trees to propagate from sowing or grafting to fruiting. Because Chinese chestnut blossoms late, 2-3-year-old seedlings are often used as rootstocks and grafted before and after leaf expansion. Planting chestnut trees can enter the full fruit period in 15 years, and the life span of a chestnut tree is about 20-35 years.

Matters needing attention in pruning chestnut trees

1. Truncation

Cut off part of the annual branch. Short cutting can promote branching, enhance tree potential, compact crown, reduce male flowers, and adjust the distribution of nutrients. Delayed pruning can be used for prosperous trees and branches and cut short after sprouting.

2. Retraction

Cut short to perennial branches. It is mainly used for perennial branches where the growth is weak, the fruiting part moves outward and the inner chamber is bald seriously.

3. Thinning branches

That is, the opposite branch, the light branch and the slender branch of the inner chamber are removed from the base.

4. Hooded scissors

Winter truncation was carried out near the new wheel marks with different times of coring. Leaving 2-4 small buds on the new wheel marks is called wearing a live cap to prune. If handled properly, the small buds on the cap and the big buds under the wheel marks can bear fruit branches. It is called wearing a dead hat to prune the buds without leaving buds on the new wheel marks, so that the big buds will bear fruit under the wheel marks.

5. Slow release

Slow release means no cutting. The main function is to disperse nutrition and ease the tree potential. Slow pruning is often used for prosperous trees.

6. Pulling branches and scratching

For the strong and prosperous auxiliary branches without coring in the crown, the sap was flattened during the period of sap flow to bud opening in spring, and scratched above the buds that needed to germinate to make them produce strong branches, and then the slowly flattened branches were retracted to the part of the strong branches when they were pruned in winter.