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FAQs
Which Chestnut Should I Choose?
Horse Chestnuts produce inedible nuts called conkers. Sweet Chestnuts produce edible nuts.
Aesculus, the ornamental horse chestnut, comes in a range of sizes, flowering colours and conker-value.
The classic Wild Horse Chestnut (Conker tree), Aesculus hippocastanum is the largest and reaches 40m after a hundred years.
Its exotic candelabra-like flowers are creamy-white with a golden yellow spot that darkens to red as the bloom ages.
Red Horse Chestnut trees, Aesculus x carnea 'Briottii' can touch 20 metres and has vibrant red and apricot flowers.
The conkers are inferior to wild ones, with less spiny husks and smaller yields, so less mess.
White Horse Chestnut trees, Aesculus hippocastanum 'Baumannii', are a little larger than Briotti, and are sterile with no conkers, so better for planting along drives and avenues; it's a splendid shade tree in pastures and paddocks too.
Its white flowers are more profuse than the wild horse chestnut, wonderful up close, so try to plant one where you pass by.
Edible Sweet Chestnuts, Castanea sativa, are much more upright than a typical horse chestnut but grow to similar tall heights, and produce yellowy/green catkins followed by nutritious nuts. In the kitchen, they are likened to a protein rich grain, rather than a nut.
They need full sun, fertile soil, and will not grow well on chalk.
Horse Chestnuts grow on any well-drained ground with some depth of soil.
A mature chestnut is a magnificent specimen with deep roots, so shallow chalk or rocky sites probably won't provide long term stability: the mature tree might fall over! 3
Aftercare
Chestnuts come into leaf early and have lush foliage, so they get thirsty in a dry spring!
Until its root system has established, your chestnut needs watering thoroughly whenever in dry weather.
Cut out dead and diseased wood anytime.
Chestnut trees are only delivered and planted bareroot during late Autumn to early Spring, from November to March.
Chestnuts are tap-rooted trees, so we neither sell nor recommended container-grown specimens.
Winter is the best time to plant any tree, because bareroot trees are cheaper, easier to carry and plant, and tend to establish even better than their pot grown equivalents.
Watch our Tree Planting Video for instructions.
Although optional, we strongly recommend using Rootgrow.
Aftercare:
Remember: the two biggest killers of recently transplanted trees are underwatering, and being choked by weeds and grass.
- Regular, thorough watering is vital during dry weather in their first spring and summer, and highly recommended the following summer, especially if there is a heat wave. Do not overwater, only when the top couple of inches of soil dries out.
- Either remove weeds and grass by hand periodically, or use some form of mulch to suppress them.
Tree Planting Accessories
Standards that are 6/8cm in girth and upwards are quite big trees, so they need a tree planting stake and a tree tie (with a buffer between the tree and the stake) during their first couple of years.
A mulch mat is will suppress weeds & grass, and preserve moisture: remember that dry soil and competition with weeds are the two biggest killers of new trees.
Even with a mat, you should remove anything that manages to grow up between the mat and the trunk in late spring and summer.
You can buy those items separately, or save money with our Tree Planting Pack.
You definitely need a tree guard if there are deer or rabbits about.
In urban areas with no wild animals, tree guards are great for protecting against mowers and strimmers.
For that purpose, you can cut one tree guard into several pieces about 20-25cm long, to act as skirting around the base of the tree.
Mycorrhizal Fungi
We cannot recommend using Rootgrow fungi enough: it makes a huge difference, especially with larger trees, which are scrambling to regrow the root systems that they lost when we dug them up, in order to support their now top-heavy growth above ground.
Mycorrhizal fungi assist the roots in accessing soil nutrients and water, and protect the roots from soil critters.
In return, the tree shares sugar with them, and the result can be over 50% more growth above ground!
No, every part of the Horse Chestnut tree including the nuts is not good for horses to eat. If a horse were to eat a large amount of them, it would cause severe illness.
Generally, horses are more than intelligent enough not to eat plants that are bad for them, but still it's not a good tree to plant in a horse paddock.
The name Horse Chestnut probably has the same origin as Horseradish, meaning large or coarse, rather than "for horses".