Chestnut Ideas, Tips & Guides

Mushrooms are not always part of the ground! Here are some edible ones that you can see growing on the bark of the trees in gardens and wild.

The glossy mahogany-brown nuts of the horse chestnut or conker tree, are commonly known as conkers, after the game played with them by generations of children. However, unlike the nuts of the similarly named but unrelated sweet chestnut tree, conkers aren’t edible to humans unless cooked. However they are widely used for crafts such as model-making as well as games.

Recently I went to see a big garden—seven acres to be exact. It was located on some of the priciest real estate anywhere, and it was gorgeous. It took a big crew to maintain it and a big chipper shredder machine to keep it in wood chips. Needless to say, it was bankrolled by someone with a big pocketbook. It also took a lot of big-leaf plants to cover the ground. Small and delicate plants have their charms, but when you have acreage to cover, eyesores to hide, or lots to do other than gardening, big plants are the ticket.

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Don’t let the fallen foliage in your garden go to waste, and use it to improve the plants’ health. How? Here’s all the information on How to Make Leaf Mold from Fallen Leaves!

These two tropical delights have a lot in common! Don’t let their sweet juicy taste and almost similar appearance trick you; learn the differences in this extensive Lychee vs. Rambutan guide below.

When Neil Patterson Jr. was about 7 or 8 years old, he saw a painting called “Gathering Chestnuts,” by Tonawanda Seneca artist Ernest Smith. Patterson didn’t realize that the painting showed a grove of American chestnuts, a tree that had been all but extinct since his great-grandparents’ time. Instead, what struck Patterson was the family in the foreground: As a man throws a wooden club to knock chestnuts from the branches above, a child shells the nuts and a woman gathers them in a basket. Even the dog seems engrossed in the process, watching with head cocked as the club sails through the air.

Michael Gollop / Getty Images

There can’t be a more iconic symbol of Halloween than a witch riding a broomstick. In olden times it wouldn’t have been a problem to wander out into the woodland and cut a stout pole and then find sticks to make the sweeping end, and then you’d have yourself a fine broom, or besom. I suspect most of them were used for more mundane purposes – they are jolly useful things to have to hand.

The morning after last week’s storms, our morning walk was littered with ‘conkers’, the large and shiny seeds of the Horse Chesnut (Aesculus hippocastanum). Ryan started picking some of the nicer ones up. “The people at work”, he said, “have been discussing whether or not conkers repel spiders. I’m going to try it.”

I read an anecdote (and it bothers me now that I can’t remember where) about a crew on the ISS who looked at the food supplies on board. They called down to Mission Control and said, “We have lots of packets of Grits in stock, but no one likes them. Can we just toss them out?”

Several times a year someone sends me a photo of a tree they believe to be an American chestnut (Castanea dentata, Zones 4–8). Frequently what they actually have sent is a photo of an Asian chestnut species or Allegheny chinquapin (Castanea pumila, Zones 5–9), another species native to the eastern United States. From time to time, I have seen the sprouts of a true American chestnut tree in the wild. American chestnuts have three nuts per bur and canoe-shaped leaves with deeply toothed margins. Their buds are smooth, brown, pointed, and usually askew on the twig. However, the sprouts I’ve seen pale in comparison to what once dominated our eastern forests. The American chestnut once thrived throughout the forests of the eastern United States, leaving its mark on both the landscape and lives of the people who inhabited the region. This tree played a crucial role in the cultural, economic, and ecological tapestry of the South and southeastern United States, making it an integral part of our region’s history. Trees were huge, straight pillars like our native tulip trees (Liriodendron tulipifera, Zones 4–9)—and on a massive scale (from 50 to 100 feet tall). Learn more about the history of this magnificent species and the current state of American chestnut tree conservation efforts here.

Conker collecting has encouraged many a stick to be thrown into a Horse Chestnut tree. The candle or flower heads are even more spectacular than the crop of conkers that they give birth too.

True nuts include Pecan, Sweet Chestnuts, Beechnuts, Acorns, Hazel nuts and Hornbeams. True nuts are a simple dry fruit with one seed in which the seed case becomes very hard on maturity. True nuts do not split apart like Brazil nuts or horse chestnuts but the seed and the fruit are one and the same.

Avoiding early onset of death caused by disease or climate change will affect the trees we plant in the future. Gardeners must consider tree selection carefully bearing in mind more than aesthetics and utility. Economics of forestry have increased there relevance to Britain as (the dreaded by some) Brexit nears. We import and export more wood than in previous years but with those extra tree miles comes risks. Toxins pests and disease are to readily spread from one country to another. CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is designed to protect over-exploitation and endangerment  through international trade.

I have been  inspired later in life by trees and all things with a tree connection. My previous lack of knowledge and propensity to skirt over a massive subject will be developed into a more active skirmish but probably in my normal  skittish manner.

The common horse chestnut tree grows beautifully in Upper and Middle South gardens, Zones 6-7 (USDA). Although native to Europe, this tree grows 60 ft. tall and 40 ft. wide with bulky and dense foliage, a perfect tree for adding shade to parks and walkways. The leaves are divided into five to seven toothed, 4- to 10 inches-long leaflets and put on a spectacular flower show with one foot plumes of white blooms with pink markings. Leathery capsules release glossy, dark brown, chestnut-like seeds (buckeyes) in autumn. Prune established horse chestnuts only to remove dead branches. The horse chestnut’s invasive roots can break up sidewalks. Some varieties of horse chestnut develop good fall color.

Chestnuts are beautiful trees, providing shade and multi-season interest as well as edible nuts and high-quality wood. They can be productive for decades, and typically grow to impressive heights.Unfortunately, like most plants, they are suscept

Chestnuts are a group of hardwood, deciduous trees, native to the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere where they thrive in USDA Hardiness Zones 4 to 8, with some variation in range depending on the species.Starchy, sweet, and flavorful, these nuts hav

So you’re ready to grow your own chestnut trees, or maybe you already have a few in the backyard. Do you know how to keep them healthy, producing sizable yields of nuts each year when they reach maturity?Insects, as well as some larger visitors to your ga