Chestnut crabapple was developed by the University of Minnesota. DNA fingerprinting indicates that one of its parents is Wealthy, so it is technically an apple crab (50% apple and 50% crabapple.) Give this to someone and tell them it’s a crabapple. They’ll likely be hesitant to try it but then once they do, they’ll wonder where these things have been their whole life. It’s one of the sweetest of the apple crabs. After not trying it for several years, we tried it again the the Fall of 2023 from Rod McIver’s Kalipsell orchard and we were surprised at how much better it was than we remembered. It had notes of bubblegum. However, in 2024, when the Western Ag Research Center put on their filed day in mid September, we tried some from their trees and this time, the flavor was much nuttier, less bubblegum flavored, and more mellow. It comes on a couple weeks before Kerr for us and they complement eachother very well. If you want the intense flavor, you bite into a Kerr. If you went a more mellow, nutty, sweet and delicious crab with less acidity, get the chestnut.Hardy to at least -50F.

Our Spring 2025 trees are grafted onto Bud 118 rootstock. This scion/rootstock combination will allow growers to plant this in Alaska and other places that have brutally cold winters below -50F. And given that Chestnut is fairly early in Western Montana (1st-2nd week of September), it should still ripen just fine in Alaska. Usually anything that ripens beyond mid-Sept in Montana won’t typically ripen in the colder parts of Alaska.