This collection gathers posts on seed collection, stratification, and the steps we use to get cold hardy species to germinate. Around the nursery about half of our plants are grown from seed, much of it locally collected the year before. There are many methods for growing trees and smaller plants from seeds, ranging from in the ground to plug trays, air pruning beds, small and large raised beds, every size of pot, and then all the options for mediums, fertilization, mulch and compost. We don't yet have one definitive system for this, every year seems to be an ongoing trial with a batch of methods, new ideas and leaning into what worked best on the last iteration. Some seedings do well in small pots, transplant well and are easier to grow than in the ground in a weedy bed. But given the right conditions, in ground can be far easier if you get all of the elements right, and many growers have their established system, a recipe that works great. As we continue to experiment, the following posts explore what it's like to grow trees and assorted plants from seeds in a small nursery. Posts are grouped by season.
Questions and comments always welcome to doug@oaksummitnursery.ca.
Seeds And Stratification
54 postsSpring
54 posts
meadow blazingstar, a native perennial wildflower collect from northern manitoba
flats like this are an easy way to start the seeds, then they get pulled apart and...
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giant hyssop. the seeds are tiny so starting them in a clump, then gently pull it apart and plant small clusters into plugs. same process for most of the perennial flower seeds.
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I keep trays over the seeds as defense against squirrels and sometimes my cat likes to walk on them. also a bit of shade is good when it's hot, it's time now to take them off, manchurian apricot and siberian stone pine in these two. ready to transplant into plugs.
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wild american black currant, super tasty native currant. I collect the seeds every year from one local population I've found with good tasting fruit, similar to crandall just smaller and they ripen unevenly which looks good, you get black red yellow and green fruit all at once
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a few native seeds germinating in the greenhouse, narrow leaved echinacea, upright prairie coneflower, nannyberry... and some seeds from evan's cherry (bali)
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stinging nettle seeds coming up. planted april 1st, it's just warm enough now staying above freezing at night for them to germinate. these will get divided up into plugs, they're perennial and the fresh shoots in the spring are popular.
single truss tomatoes on 65 days
looks like 3-4 per 1020 tray is good spacing, a bamboo pole makes things much tidier. and actually picking them up to move things around makes it easy to keep up on pruning. I like it, a complete tomato crop start to...
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manchurian apricot, stratifying for about 3 months in a fridge and just starting to wake up
they're tricky to store, the seeds have a higher oil content than a plum and these seeds are from 2024, so I've been holding them around 10% moisture content but we had kernels that desiccated, most would rattle inside...
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wolf willow from seeds I collected in the fall
I like these small native shrubs with the sage colored leaves. a few containers made two plug trays of fifty, going heavier on plugs this year since they worked out, I find the trick is to water them daily and wait until...
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canada wild plum stratified winter 2023 then again in 2024
the first year maybe 40% germinated, this spring the other 60%. this is why I like to keep large seeds in the bag until they start to germinate, sometimes the dormancy is so deep they need two cycles. I should note...
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Collecting elm seeds. A roof top is easy place to collect reasonably clean seeds. I had to cut the tree growing into the garage and it had the side benefit of shaking off all the seeds. About the species, this is Siberian elm which is contentious in North America and can be invasive with the amount of seed they drop that's easily dispersed. Growing up we had shelter belts of these around our place, and the species has some improved resistance to dutch elm disease over the larger native american elm. Now we only offer american elm on our seed shop, which also drop a tonne of seed in may every year and should be collected quickly before they germinate.
peaches, germinating in the fridge so ready to pot up
this seed source is identified as prunus davidiana...
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castor beans
I grew some plants a couple years ago and kept the seeds, they're fun, a fast growing crazy alien looking annual. the seeds really dried out in the...
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Germination testing a few annuals, a quick method in a bag on paper towel and a few drops of water. at 5 days most of the basil and tomatoes are up, a good result. red rubin wants to explode out of the bag. so what's next well I'll probably plant the basil, tomatoes need a couple more weeks targeting planting day - 8 weeks for those (we can plant in southern mb early to mid june)
first walnut germinated in the fridge, stratifying all winter
Black walnut collected in zone 3 is tricky to find, and pushes the northern boundary for nut...
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Manchurian apricots, sprouting in the fridge at 120 days stratifying so time to pot up
they don't need the shells removed, which just fall apart when ready. excited because these have good genetics. from a local zone 3 apricot orchard where a named cultivar was...
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nanking cherries, potting up sprouty ones from the fridge
If this was april I would be doing them in the greenhouse, so trying these little plugs to see if they can hold on for a month in them. maybe I could have kept them in the fridge a few more weeks? probably better to...
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germinating last summer, black walnut top left, butternut bottom left, small one in center is japanese walnut
(heartnut), buartnut on right (hybrid of...
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sometimes tree seeds get very sprouty before I can plant them, here is pear, nanking cherry, plum, chokecherry
these are all totally fine to plant at this stage, just dibble a hole and usually I trim the...
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two trays of canada wild plum, the first one (and the one full of trees) started early may, and the second one started
early april, spotty germination. letting plum seeds have a good long cold stratification period through until may is a better result. the april tray may all germinate eventually, but if they need more cold time...
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plums just let germinate in a bag of peat moss in the shade, pulling out the sprouty ones to pot up
I had an air prune bed planted oct 2022 and this spring (18 months later) keep finding new seedlings in it, I suspect the bed froze too hard to fully stratify them being above ground and not well insulated, so last...
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a few trays growing in the greenhouse in small 2
5” pots at about 2 weeks from germination. some of the larger seeds like plums, walnuts, oak need some more time, I suspect a certain number of days...
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nannyberry seeds germinating in the fridge
I even did a shorter stratification than recommended: 5 weeks warm (room temperature) followed by 3 months cold. There were locally collected, maybe...
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These silver buffaloberry seeds are ready to plant after a few months in the fridge in damp sand
This seed was collected last fall and has a high germination rate, it's the yellow variety and some percentage of the...
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germination testing elm seeds
elm are funny, the seeds ripen and fall at the start of summer, so they need to be collected right away and kept cold and dry. looks like 90%+ germination for both american and siberian...
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Germination testing some purple lilac seeds, these are 8 days after taking them out of the fridge #seedgermination
potting up our germination test from months back, the small oaks have been alive and fine just in a dish with a small
amount of water and paper towel on the window sill, a few pine cones for...
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making a jersusalem artichoke seed garden, I’ve brought in tubers and seeds this year to have a variety of plants
and improve chances for pollination. Tubers in a few new varieties from...
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planted a multi sown raised bed of stratified seeds this morning
other photos are an update from the first bed planted a couple weeks ago. raised beds are easier to manage for seeds and...
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Hawthorne just about to flower
this one grows wild here, not sure about the species. I would like to grow more of them but the seeds...
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planting stratified seed, some open pollinated norkent apple seeds from a friend, ussurian pears, Asian pears,
and then sweet cicely also a gift from a friend. one way to know you seeds are stratified is to leave them in the fridge until they start to germinate, takes some extra care when you plant. I like to broadcast into small...
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Malus bacatta seeds germinating, showing a careful method if you're monitoring germination rates. Usually I'll stratify and plant them into a community pot then prick out the germinating seeds. But I have a few seed lots of these and I want to check the germination rate, so planting them as they germinate. Note these went 38 days in cold strat, and germination started 1 day after warming up, each day I'm getting 10-20 from the bag start. Sometimes longer stratification will make all of the seeds germinate at the same time. Sometimes I wait a few weeks and determine I didn't strat them long enough and the seeds go back in the fridge for another cycle. Sometimes I soak the ungerminated seeds with a ga-3 spray and see if it helps. by far the easiest way is to plant outside in the fall, but this gives me something to do over the winter and some trees do well with a head start. #seedstarting #appleseed
basil
one of many trays. So is it weird to want to grow all of them? the main logistical challenge is I’ll want to keep seed, in fact most of my gardening is focused on seeds this year. 150’ spacing between Basil beds to avoid...
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jerusalem artichoke from seed after a week, second photo some older plants around six weeks in small pots under lights
I got a new batch of seeds in from another source, so starting more plants to improve pollination. Hoping to grow enough varieties this summer to collect our own seed, these plants are notorious for being tricky to save...
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pear seeds after three weeks in stratification, good thing I checked they’re supposed to need sixty days
my fridge is at 1-2 C (34F) and these...
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Virginia creeper after 60 days stratification and a week to germinate
I’ll need to keep these in pots until June so will be interested to see how large they get. It might be viable to start some of our cold hardy perennials from seed in early spring and be large enough to be for sale as...
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Jerusalem artichoke seeds at 5 days #jerusalemartichoke #seedlings
dahurian larch are the most cold hardy trees in the world surviving down to -94F / -70C
here I have a small community pot of them after a couple of months stratifying. Conifers grow slowly in the first year, so you can keep them spaced close and them spread them out later. After two years they’re...
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Wild cucumber seeds at 60 days cold stratification, germination just starting in the fridge. these are from an old regenerating patch at our farm, they were growing behind the barn twenty years ago and I only recently learned what they were. Just a cool fast growing annual vine with crazy alien pods growing on it. #seedsaving #wildcucumber
Ohio buckeye is an uncommon tree around here but seems fully winter hardy in zone 3
The big compound leaves are so cool. Trying a seedbed of them this summer. Sourcing tree seeds from a similar climate is very challenging, for example my buckeye seeds are from a thousand miles south of here. Will they...
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Generic variation, same batch of apple seeds - a few just want to be red #appleseed #appleseedling
a little catnip garden from seed saved last year
If you haven’t given your car fresh catnip before, it seems a...
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Malus baccata mandsuria (North Dakota source) at 6 days 40 days stratification. We have a few trays of these along with another seed source of the more generic Siberian crabapple, happy to see these are waking up quickly and nearly 100% germination after only a week. In the past we've had anywhere from 20-45 days in stratification for this same species before germination starts in the fridge, just seems to depend on the seeds, maybe age or just genetic variation.