Grafting

Grafting is the fusion of genetic material of two compatible trees — the industry standard for replicating strong performers with desirable genetic traits.

Although we are a seedling first organization, we do offer a limited number of grafted, cloned, root cut, and layered trees each year. 

For chestnut orcharding in particular, grafting is often recommended.

As the University of Michigan Extension highlights,

“All commercial chestnut orchards should be established with cultivars that have been selected by horticulturalists for superior qualities.

These cultivars are not produced through seed but are cloned by grafting or budding onto seedlings that will support the chosen cultivar.

In this manner, a single tree with beneficial traits can be copied millions of times by simply cutting small branches from the chosen tree and attaching it onto the stem of planted seedlings.

Conversely, seedlings are the result of sexual recombination between a known mother tree and an unknown father, resulting in endless variability and unreliable characteristics making them suboptimal for commercial production.”

However, there is debate over whether grafted chestnuts are in fact superior.
Seed selection by enhanced collection, propagation, and known selection replanting have been found to be "superior" to grafting techniques because variation and survival rates are higher in non-grafted trees.
Genetic variation in tree crops is also low generationally with protogyny trees replicating and or out performing their parent trees.
Moreover, not all plantings follow orcharding requirements and the availability of grafted trees can be price-prohibitive.
Critically, we've observed that the promise of future success is in fact unknown.
Those who purport to know the future of a tree positive or negative should be met with some skepticism — particularly when these voices are selling expensive grafted trees.

From the same article as highlighted above;

“The grafted trees all produced some nuts in the second and third years after planting (1996-97), while seedling lineages produced only a few nuts in those early years.

From the fourth year onward, both grafted and seedling trees have produced a marketable crop of nuts annually.

Surprisingly, seedlings of ‘Grimo 142Q’ produced more nuts per tree than their grafted parent cultivar.”

The debate over grafting and seedling production is still unresolved with strong arguments on both sides.