I'd like to plant a couple of sweet chestnuts and eventually coppice them for long lasting stakes (yes, it will take a long time...) I don't want to buy the expensive young saplings I read about on the net. I've looked under a long avenue of sweet chestnuts that produce masses of nuts in the hope of finding seedlings, without success. Does anyone have any advice?
I'm not looking for nuts, just stakes and poles. I've got access to neglected hazel coppice, but the wood does not last long.
Take some of the nuts you find on the ground, put them in a pot filled with gritty soil, or direct into the soil on a slight mound well mixed with grit, keep moist but not wet and leave them in the pot from autumn all throughout winter. Don't mollycoddle them, they sprout really easily if you do this.
Have a few seedlings here myself ;D
Thanks. Given the lack of seedlings near the trees, I wondered if they were difficult to germinate, but your note has encouraged me to try.
I was hoping to gain a couple of years by finding wild seedlings, but apparently not.