April 21, 2014, marked the beginning of an American chestnut orchard at Carr Creek Lake, Sassafras, Ky. This is the realization of an effort that began with phone calls and inquires in 2009 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the American Chestnut Foundation signed a Memorandum of Understanding for joint efforts in the restoration of the American chestnut tree.
Working with the Kentucky Chapter of the American Chestnut Foundation, Kentucky Division of Fish & Wildlife Resources, Eastern Kentucky Division of Forestry and the Knott County Creeks & Streams (PRIDE) committee, an initial planting was completed April 21. The initial planting of 108 nuts, 26 seedlings and 17 stump sprouts was accomplished quickly through the involvement of Knott County Central High School teacher Steve Mobley along with student teacher Michael Conway and 19 FFA students who volunteered to help on planting day. This was a tremendous effort on their part and is greatly appreciated. Volunteers picked up and removed litter from the orchard site. Carr Creek Lake volunteer Edie Wright assisted in laying out the rows and moved and replanted the 11 test trees prior to the initial planting. All these volunteers donated a total of 71 hours for a value of more than $1,600.
The American chestnut, which once made up a quarter of the trees in Appalachia, was virtually wiped out in the early 1900s when a blight was brought to the United States on imported Chinese chestnut trees. Recent decades have seen organizations working to restore the population by crossbreeding American chestnut trees with the blight-resistent Chinese chestnut.
The new orchard at Carr Creek Lake is being established as part of The American Chestnut Foundation’s backcross breeding program. This program is developing blight-resistant chestnut trees with regional adaptability by utilizing offspring from native Kentucky chestnut trees. Although this orchard will represent several specific genetic lines, the Kentucky Chapter hopes to one day have at least 20 different lines from across the state for future reintroduction efforts back into the forests. Additional information on the American Chestnut Foundation’s backcross breeding program can be found at www.acf.org.
There are a total of 162 trees in the Carr Creek orchard representing four different genetic sources. Additional planting will occur next spring to complete the orchard and bring it up to the target total of 220 trees. Once the trees grow large enough, blight resistance evaluations will be conducted to determine and retain the most blight resistant and pure American appearing trees. Most of the trees in this orchard are 15/16 American and 1/16 Chinese. The blight resistance comes from the Chinese trees. The highly blight resistant and American-appearing trees will be utilized for further tree development purposes.
There is much more work to be done. Electric fencing will be installed as soon as possible, the rows will have landscape cloth and mulch put down and an irrigation system will be installed. Anyone interested in this project is more than welcome to volunteer to help. Contact the office at 606-642-3308.