Central & Western Iowa · Des Moines to Omaha
Trees that make food for your land.
Tell us what you want your land to do for you. We'll build you a custom plan to meet your goals, protect the trees from deer and cattle, and get them planted right.
Start here
What do you want your land to do?
Pick a goal and we'll show you the trees that actually fit it. You do not need to understand tree genetics to buy a good tree.
What we grow
Nuts, native fruits and wildlife trees
Nut trees
Chestnut grown from 24 different mother trees, northern pecan, hazelnut, shellbark hickory, and the best oaks for wildlife.
Native fruits
American persimmon, pawpaw, and thornless fruiting honey locust for silvopasture and late-season wildlife food.
Seedling fruit
Disease-tested apple and pear seedlings for wildlife plantings, plus installation of culinary fruit trees you supply.
How this works
We install custom tree plans instead of shipping boxes
We are a small Iowa nursery rather than a national mail-order catalog. Everything is local pickup, a Des Moines meetup, or we come plant it for you.
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Tell us your goal
Deer, early nuts, big nuts, cold hardiness, disease resistance, fast growth or food for your family. Use the finder above or just send us a message describing your ground.
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We recommend a mix
Almost nobody should plant one family. A mix spreads disease risk, guarantees cross pollination, and staggers your nut drop across September and October instead of dumping it all in one week.
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Reserve for spring
Reservations open January 2027. Trees are ready from April at the earliest, and we keep planting through the season — potentially into September, depending on the species and the weather. A deposit holds your trees. Popular families sell out.
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Pick up, or we install
Grab them at the farm or meet us in Des Moines. Or let us plant them with tree tubes and stakes, or T-posts and welded wire cages if you run cattle.
Why seedlings
Known parents at a fraction of grafted prices
We sell seedlings rather than grafted named cultivars. Every seedling we grow came from a nut produced by a specific named parent tree, sourced from respected programs including Burnt Ridge Nursery in Washington and the Iowa chestnut genetics developed at Red Fern Farm.
A Qing family seedling is the daughter of a Qing tree rather than a copy of it. Seedling genetics vary from the parent and that variation is exactly what lets us sell you a strong tree for a fraction of grafted prices. You also get a natural taproot that establishes faster and lives longer in a field, plus the genetic diversity that keeps a single disease from taking out your whole planting.
One exception. Some species are available as grafted named cultivars, but only as part of a custom installation — never as mail-away stock. Those are older trees, normally two years old and occasionally three or four depending on what we have, and they are normally one piece of a larger planting plan we build with you rather than a standalone purchase. Ask and we will tell you what is available.
Our seedlings get a serious head start. We start them under grow lights in an insulated shed as early as February, months before anything could survive outside. They run 18 hours of light every day with water and temperature held exactly where they want it.
By the time a tree reaches your ground it is already established and growing hard, so it goes into its first Iowa summer and fall well ahead of a bare-root plug pulled out of cold storage.
We do grow American chestnut. It was the king of the eastern forest until the blight wiped it out, and owning one is a genuinely cool piece of that history. Work to bring the species back is ongoing and every tree in the ground helps. We label it honestly, because blight is still out there and the tree may eventually find it.
That honesty is the whole point. We would rather lose a sale than sell you a tree that disappoints you in year twelve.
More than nursery stock
Selection, protection and installation
The number one reason tree plantings fail is not the tree. It is grass competition, deer browse and no protection. We fix all three.
Tree tubes & stakes
Highly recommended on every planting. A tube works like a mini greenhouse and speeds up early growth significantly, while shielding the tree from deer, rodents, wind and weather. It also makes spraying safe and lets you actually find your trees in tall grass.
T-posts & cattle cages
Cows destroy standard tube setups. If livestock have access we build a heavier welded wire cage on a T-post.
Full installation
We deliver, plant, protect, treat the base for weed competition, map your planting and hand you a care sheet.
Next step
Ready to plan your planting?
Tell us your county, roughly how many trees, and what you want the land to accomplish. We will send back a recommended mix and a price.