Washingon
Chestnuts
Washington Chestnuts Growing Season
Every year, our fresh chestnut harvest starts in early
October and ends the first week in November
The start of our growing season begins with bud break on the chestnut tree branches. Bud break usually starts in mid April. Here in western Washington state, warm days in the 70's don't show up until May in most years. This slow start to the growing season works well for our chestnut trees because cold winter temperatures were left behind in March.
Once the chestnut trees have leafed out, its grow, grow, grow until August. In the middle of all this growing is the chestnut bloom period. Blooming usually starts the last days of June and continues for about 15 days into early July.
As the growing season continues, the chestnut trees go from bloom to developing the chestnuts inside the burr. The burr is a spiky protective growth providing a safe place for the nuts to develope until the nuts are mature.
As the burrs get larger they get very heavy on the branches of the chestnut trees. Branches sometime break under the load of all the burrs. If a storm comes ashore from the Pacific Ocean, the winds from the storm can dislodge the burrs and the burrs fall to the ground. Wind storms are rare in July, August, and September in western Washington.
The growing season is well past its peak as the burrs mature to the point where the burrs crack open and present the upcoming harvest. Here in western Washington, chestnut growers allow the nuts to fall to the ground, making sure the chestnuts are fully mature with all their sweetnest and flavors intact.
Once the chestnuts are on the ground, the harvest has started and the time has come to collect and process the harvest. We handle thousands of pounds of chestnuts each harvest season. All our energies during the harvest are focused on getting the chestnuts to the chestnut comsumers of North America.
