Seeds And Stratification - Fall

Manitoba grown butternuts getting hulled, a couple of passes in the water and they come out cleaned off. then we pack then into peat moss and refrigerate. they are available in packs of 10 on our seed shop, and we also have year old trees in our fall sale just for a few more days. #butternut

Drying pine cones to open them, these are scots pine.

Collecting siberian peaches from various sources to trial. siberian c isn't exactly a cultivar, it's a seed strain with a certain set of characteristics like cold hardiness, late ripening, generally firm fruit with some yellow / green tinge to the skin. every source for these has some genetic variation depending on hybridization, and selection pressures. most sources for them are in warmer zones, 4-5. hoping to get a population growing here and really trial them in zone 3 to see if we can select for the best cold hardiness.

Collecting narrow leaf cattail and goldenrod seeds

Trying this out, drying peppers for seed extraction in halves. less work, usually I'll take out the seeds and dry the peppers / just eat them, seeing how well we can combine steps

Canada wild plum seeds available. hard to find, usually I can just get enough to grow in the nursery. these are sourced from an old row of plums probably planted for rootstocks, I selected the trees that appear to be pure prunus nigra based on the leaves and fruit, there's probably a little hybridization but these were only these plums in the area. I've also restocked american wild plum, which are a little smaller, ripen sooner and have serrate leaf margins. shipping by letter mail. #canadaplum #native #wildplum

Seeds drying, processing. the acorns rested for a few weeks and now they're float tested, about half sink and that sorts out all the best ones, weevils are most of the reason. a good percentage of the floaters are also viable, it usually just means a small amount of air inside from moisture loss. plum seeds are cleaned in water with a paint mixer, then they get dried at 30C in a food dehydrator, then stored in open containers in a fridge for a couple months.

New seeds added to my shop, some of the new stuff collected this fall. I've been out every day picking fruit and tree seeds when they're ripe getting stocked up for the winter, we grow all of these seeds in the nursery and also offer them for mail order, shipped by regular letter mail.

Cleaning a brown shopping bag of catnip for seed. doing this will get your cat's attention #seedsaving

Stinging nettle seed. easy to clean with a screen. I collected them last month and like to air dry in paper bags, after cleaning they get labelled, dated and go into a fridge. you can follow a similar process for many seeds, often the trick is timing. #seedsaving

American hazelnut, collected a few big shopping bags this fall for seed. here I'm checking them over and bagging into seed packs. hazelnut are sort of borderline recalcitrant, so you need fresh ones. I have them at room temp air dried just to get them out of the husks, them for winter storage will have then in poly bags in a fridge. #seedsaving

How not collect yarrow seed? must have missed them, almost no seeds in the flowers. timing wildflower seed collection is tricky, I must need to cut them far earlier, think the flowers had browned off for a couple weeks

Wild tobacco seed extraction. wear gloves if you're a non-smoker it's a sticky fragrant plant full of nicotine. I has some in ground and also in small pots, it's easy to grow. #wildtobacco

Stand of smooth sumac, I think. stems are smooth not fuzzy like staghorn, leaf margins are smooth to serrate but blunted. I like collecting local seed for species like sumac where they have a broad range and we're about as cold as they'll grow.

Highbush cranberry, fully ripe and they will hang around for a while. the seeds need a long warm stratification, almost six months at room temperature so starting the now is helpful to get plants growing in the spring.

Time to collect virginia creeper seeds. I have a spot where I can fill a five gallon pail on a good year, if I get them before the birds

Found a nice patch of wild licorice. the seeds are in these little burs

Nannyberry starting to ripen, they'll turn blue this month and taste delicious off the tree. these are a native shrub in the viburnum genus, related to highbush cranberry. they set fruit in the same way, you might think it was cranberry but it ripens a month later.. and while cranberry is very tart and better to cook with, nannyberry is great fresh, sweet just with a large seed, tastes more like a saskatoon mixed with something else. when they're super ripe they can hang late and taste like raisons. I'll be trying to collect more seed this fall, like other viburnum they need a long time to stratify, seed started in the spring will germinate the following year.

Ussurian pears covering this old road. I filled some bags, this is my pear rootstock in the nursery and it's ideal to find local seeds. I'll have more than enough this fall to add them to our seed shop. #wildlpear #ussurianpear

A better look at the stone pine cones I collected this week, and then by luck I found a labelled Swiss stone pine at an arboretum and picked up some cones to compare. they are quite different. leaning towards the related siberian stone pine based on the cones.

A fun group of uncommon trees at a local research station, left to right hackberry, black walnut, buckeye.. and the resident squirrel who caches a trail mix from all three. I'll be back to collect seeds from all three later this month.

Some kind of stone pine, brought from Switzerland, grows well in zone 3 / -40C. heavy cones full of large pine nuts. collected a bag, saved from the squirrels. working on ID.

European mountain ash. collected about 20 lbs of fruit for seed today, imagine it will make about a cup of seed. nice tree, attractive, the fruit are almost good enough to eat, I guess you can cook with them. I have a sweet mountain ash grafted in the orchard, should fruit next year. spent an hour keying out american vs showy vs european. European are the ones with the larger more often orange fruit, and the trees can be larger, older bark more rough. Note american can have orange fruit, but often they are red.

Collecting plums for seed from this 'wild plum' tree, it has a good crop this year. Prunus americana is so interesting because it's always freely hybridizing snd mixing up its genetics with other prunus. here this tree is pollinated by other plums in town, and it's seedlings will likely have lots of genetic variation but the wild phenotype is usually prevalent

Collected a few local cones from what is likely siberian spruce, a species that's rare around here. I always have some conifers growing as a background project, 2-3 years for them to get up to transplant size so I like to have just patches in the corner of a bed. they over winter better in ground.

Collecting narrow leaf cat tails for seed. needs to be done with a bag because they explode easily. #cattails #seedsaving

Wild tobacco, cleaning for seeds. once they turn brown and dry the little pods explode with seeds when you crush them. #wildtobacco #seedsaving

Thanks to a friend with an old norway spruce in the back tard I was able to restock with some early winter foraging. many time spruce cones open on the tree and the seed is lost, but a windy day can sometimes knock them down and provide full unopened cones full of seed. #seedsaving

3 Days into germ testing our fushimi pepper seeds, looking good I thought they would take a couple weeks. do fresh pepper seeds germinate faster? #seedsaving

Wild bergamot. dried flowers thrashed around with a screen to collect the seeds. this works well for many flowers, though for some I'm still figuring out how to separate things after. #seedsaving

Goldenrod does this poofy display when the seed mature #goldenrod

Sorting some trees seeds, green ash, boxelder, american elm. when I collect these they're stored in paper bags for the first month to air dry, mostly in a fridge, and now that they're dry I moved them to plastic. they'll store like this over the winter and by next fall they get restocked. a percentage is for our nursery and the rest is for our seed shop. #seedsaving

Haven helping while I clean the catnip seeds #catnip #seedsaving

Sweet cherry peppers. grown with isolation bags for seed, also we get to eat them. flavour? starts like a good red bell pepper with a slight cherry after taste that's distinct, no heat in these ones. I bet they're good in a salad. #seedsaving #peppers

Soaking some canada mayflower and wild sarsaparilla seeds overnight to hydrate them before cleaning. these guys and snowberries are just about all the seed that's hanging around here in the fall. just collected hops, next up are lilacs and rose hips, then I'm done collecting seeds for the year. lilac seed is stupid tricky to separate any tips welcome.

Jerusalem artichokes started from seed this spring are flowering. I'm holding out some hope for cross pollination and new seeds with several varieties growing. #sunchokes #sunchoke #jerusalemartichoke

Collecting red birch seed just as it ripens. Betula occidentalis #seedsaving

Highbush cranberry seeds drying. they're so pink

Drying some jack pine in the dehydrator to open up the serotinous cones. old forestry manuals describe the temperatures to use. the last bit is funny: "The resin of serotinous cones melts when heated, usually at temperatures in excess of 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 deg C). In one study, cones opened in 80 seconds at 200 degrees Fahrenheit (93 deg C) and within 20 seconds at temperatures above 400 degrees Fahrenheit (204 deg C). Seed viability is not markedly affected by heating, unless the cone ignites"

Stratifying seeds, some need a month or more of warm strat before the cold, so I'm starting them inside. seed just needs to be slightly damp. splitting up the lots, some in the fridge, root cellar, some in ground. stuff can happen so it's like an eggs in one basket thing. last year I put all of my plum seeds and acorns into air prune beds, and the winter was too cold for them. another lot of prunus seeds was snacked on by rodents.

Prairie sage grows in patches around our place, collecting some for seed. super aromatic. #seedsaving

Castor bean pods, close to ripe I would think, anyone know if they can take a frost? hoping to save the seeds.

Enjoying how pink these seeds are

Drying some cleaned seed, front is virginia creeper back is choke cherry. #seedsaving

Tobacco from seeds traded at a seedy saturday, claimed to be collected twelve years ago. I forget which species. Cool to see flowers late in the season.

Milkweed seed pods, leaves are the food source for monarch caterpillars.

First time growing a castor bean plant, I'm guessing the seeds are in these crazy alien pods?

Prairie sage seeds, not sure if I'll be able to separate them from the plant material. I've read about various machines to separate seeds using vibration.. so far I used a few techniques from floating to winnowing, to a stack of strainers with every screen size, but flower seeds and small fluffy ones like sage are a challenge. For my own seedbeds I can just grind up the whole plant.

All the beds around our small nursery are frozen now and will be covered in snow until April. The small raised beds each have a different type of tree seeds naturally stratifying. #treenursery

Packing some boxelder seeds, collected mid September right at their peak for the best germination. Maple / Acer seeds don't have a long shelf life so you want to get them as fresh as possible. We have these and some Red maple collected just a couple months ago, dried in brown paper bags in a fridge. The grocery stores are here switch to paper so I'm always looking for more ways to re-use the bags. #boxelder #treeseeds

Raised beds for tree seeds almost all filled, a few left to screen in the bottom for air pruning. Getting down to the wire on unfinished projects we've had some frost and the ground will freeze in the next couple of weeks, usually we'll see snow by Halloween.

Choke cherry / prunus virginiana seeds cleaned and spread out to air dry. I collected the fruit last month and it stores well refrigerated. the easiest way to clean them is in a 5 gallon pail with a paint mixer and a cordless drill. Mix for one minute, decant and repeat. The seeds are hard enough the paint mixer can't harm them, and they sink while the rest floats. For this batch I got them about 3/4 clean and let the pail sit over night, it softens up remaining pulp by hydrating and letting it break down. There's some potential that over drying these and other prunus will lower germination so I usually just air dry for a day or two then refrigerate, vs other seeds I'll dehydrate over night at 90 -100f (30-40c) to lower moisture content. These locally collected seeds are available from our site and etsy shop, link in profile. #seeds #treeseeds #seedsaving

Bag of Scots pine cones for seed. Similar to red pine, more pointed and seem to ripen later.

Catnip is about ripe for collecting seed. I've been waiting for the flowers to finish and things to dry out. Not sure what the right amount of time for herb seeds should be, if I wait for them to go completely brown then half the seeds are on the ground. Same with pine cones, seems to be a small window. #catnip #herbseeds

This fall we're using 4x2' raised beds for our tree seeds. Some are air prune beds that will get fit with a hardware cloth top to keep squirrels out. Our larger in ground beds worked this year, but this should work better and we'll plan to use the larger beds for transplants. #treenursery

Out for a walk, collecting seeds

Family walk and out collecting pine cones. This old stand was reforested after a fire fifty years ago, jack pine on the left and red pine on the right. #pine

Wolf willow / silverberry seeds will be available from us this fall. (Elaeagnus commutata) I collected some from local stands to grow, and happy to find seeds this year, last year there were none. Each one of those blue green pods has just one seed inside. these are such cool native shrub with leaves the color of prairie sage. Related to Russian olive. #wolfwillow