Cold hardy plants and seeds - Southern Manitoba

Oak Summit Nursery

Browse seeds for northern gardens, add them without leaving the catalog, and find the categories that are useful right now.

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Cherry seeds

Cold-hardy cherries for northern gardens.

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Seeds ship year roundPacked at our Manitoba nursery.
Plants are seasonalTrees and shrubs reopen in September.

Summer garden

Popular tomato seeds

Open-pollinated tomatoes for northern gardens.

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Warm-season garden

Pepper seeds

Sweet, hot, and unusual peppers.

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Blooming now

Flowers and pollinator plants

Wildflowers and garden flowers for northern summers.

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Easy summer crops

Herb seeds

Annual and perennial herbs.

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From the nursery

Field Notes

Photos and observations from propagation, seed collection, and the nursery.

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dwarf saucy mary, introduced by the dwarf tomato project in 2018. modern... - Tomatoes And Peppers, July 2026, ASC-082Jul 14, 2026 · Tomatoes & Peppersdwarf saucy mary, introduced by the dwarf tomato project in 2018. modern tomato as a rule always have cool names, and can look completely unlike any tomato you'll find in a produce department. these ones are ripe when green. and if you haven't tried growing dwarf tomatoes, what a treat. super compact and productive plants, we're trying them for the time this year. they need less support (or none?) and it's like you get just as many tomatoes. I added a new section for dwarfs to our seed shop.Read field note +2
nanking cherry, ripe today in mid July. slightly earlier than the larger... - Plum And Cherry Hybrids, July 2026...Jul 14, 2026 · Plum & Cherry Hybridsnanking cherry, ripe today in mid July. slightly earlier than the larger sour cherries and evans by about. week. sooner in full sun, another bush I checked had orange / some green fruit but it was in full shade. nanking can be pruned as a bush, and are range lived - the bushes I picked today are three decades old, and fully cold hardy to -40. they're great to eat fresh, just small for a cherry pitter. I'll process these and keep seed to grow next year, and some will make it onto our seed shop. to grow them, cold stratify for three months, in a fridge in a bag with damp peat moss, vermiculite or sand just enough to keep the seed damp, and then plant in the spring. At about four months whether you want them to or not, they'll germinate in the fridge, so time it. Or plant outside in the fall, just cover them so they don't turn into a snack for mice etc.Read field note +2
wild plums, by september they'll developed a red and yellow color and... - Rootstocks And Seedlings, July 2026, ASC-117Jul 13, 2026 · Rootstocks & Seedlingswild plums, by september they'll developed a red and yellow color and I'll collect them for seed. This tree is a 25-30 year old seedling plum, in a small town backyard. all that I can say about it is that the fruit and leaves are typical for prunus americana, and given that hybrid cultivar plums have little pollen, it's very likely pollenated every year by another wild plum in a nearby yard. Seedling plums in a residential setting, in cultivation just like crabapples surely have some mixed bag of genetics, it could have small percentages of P. salicina or P. nigra in it, one hint is that it doesn't sucker profusely like typical americana. But as far as usefulness as a pollinator, and a rootstock, this sort of seedling can basically be called american wild plum, there is the phenomenon of segregation toward the wild phenotype - when you cross some plum with a wild one, you often get seedlings that look just like the wild one.Read field note +2
nanking cherry just starting to ripen on this shaded bush. it's july 12... - Plum And Cherry Hybrids, July 2026, ASC-219Jul 12, 2026 · Plum & Cherry Hybridsnanking cherry just starting to ripen on this shaded bush. it's july 12, and we're in southern MB - the 35C this week should move things along, an other years I've picked ripe nanking right in this range about the middle of the month. the fruit will hang on for about two weeks, until it's so ripe that it drops or wildlife eat them. nanking is a drupe, not exactly a cherry or a plum, more of a cherry for sure, and the species is P. tomentosa which means fuzzy or hairy, and that's a quality in the leaves that can help identify the bush. they're a sour cherry, but when ripe not very tart i would rate them 2-3 out of 10, enough that it adds a nice balance if you make them into a preserve. you can pit them, but it's tricky because of the size. good to eat fresh for sure, picked off the bush when you walk by.Read field note +1

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