How to Layer chestnuts from Zs Nutty Ridge and SARE Farmer.pdf

Cloning your best trees is possible through stool bed layering or what we simply call “layering”. Cloning your best chestnut trees allows you to make identical copies of a tree that you believe is a superior tree. Clones of a superior tree you can plant on final spacing to increase productivity or expand your orchard and share or trade the best genetics with other growers. In only a few easy steps we can do this by encouraging sucker (a.k.a. shoot) growth, then encouraging root growth on the suckers and then dig them up before they start to grow again in the following spring. Of course, there are more details we need to know to be successful, but it isn’t difficult to do. Cloning a known tree via layering is lower cost than most seedlings without the unknown production, disease resistance and double planting needed for seedlings.