Seed Stratification and Germination

flowering quince, a shrubby relative to the larger tree form quince. these guys are full of seeds, more so than other quince. Chaenomeles speciosa is the species, they maybe get to 10ft as a shrub or larger bush, True Quince (Cydonia oblonga) can get about twice that size. neither ones of these trees grows in zone 3, but we have some fruit sent by a friend on the east coast so growing out more seedlings this spring.

black eye susan seed. some cone flowers seem easy to collect, cut in the fall and stored to dry, passed through a screen. I have just enough experience with flowers to know it can be tricky to time. a growing part of the nursery work here is to plant beds and large pots of wild flowers, get to know them and save the seeds.

basil germination tests

northern red oak are uncommon around manitoba, but we're going to try them from a quebec seed source in zone 4a. provenance is the location, where the seeds are from - and often for a seed lot you want them from a close by or similar climate to know the trees will grow well. there is genetic variation inside species for traits like cold hardiness, a bur oak acorn from texas would likely die in our -40 winters, yet the same species here has adapted.

germination testing our basil, this bag has a strong response after just a few days. basil seed can have a shorter shelf life so it's important to periodically test. most of our seeds are just from last season, by selling out we always have a fresh supply. having said that, stored cold and dry many tree and perennial seeds have good germination rates for years.

a new seed lot of siberian c peach for our trial. now 5 sources of the cold hardy peaches have been collected, all growing in zones 4-5 from ontario and quebec, with a range of reported ripening dates, and some differences in the seed's appearance. we're hunting for the real deal, the most cold hardy peach. While these are around in Canada, I have yet to find a source that is known to actually survive -35 to -40C so this trial will grow out 25-50 of each source and see what happens, which ones handle our prairie winter. It's possible that you can only fruit them in zone 4, but given anecdotes and how variable winters can be, it's possible that in the right location they can fruit in Manitoba/Saskatchewan/Alberta. If you have a peach tree and you're in zone 3 reach out please we're interested to know.

added new Manitoba native wildflowers to our seed shop today. https://oaksummitnursery.ca/collections/new-seeds

Seed stratification, here's how I do it. soak seeds overnight, drain and add some damp peat moss, mix up and put in the fridge. also label with the date and expected months required. I use peat moss but sand is also good, or coir or seed starting mix. you want around 2-4x the volume of your seeds in the medium, it's there to keep the moisture even and create some buffer between the seeds. also if they sprout early it makes the easier to separate, I will often let them start to germinate in the bags then plant out into pots. #seedstarting

Germination testing sunflower and they want to explode out of the bag, second photo is rhubarb to pot some up under lights. don't start your sunflowers in feb it's just a germination test, but rhubarb from seed is underrated, they'll be up to gallon pot size by summer and it's far easier than dividing

Ribes odoratum seedlings of Crandall currant, one of the largest fruiting tastiest currants, but unusual because it's a clove currant. I started them early into stratification, and at 5 months they just germinated in the fridge. Better timing would be start them jan/feb and plant in May. I have these seeds on our shop!

Siberian crabapple seeds collected from various sources showing the diversity. apples are generally a mixed bag of several species, malus baccata often have some percentage of hybridization, the trees will be very similar as rootstock and for zone 2/3 hardiness, but the fruit will range from tiny and red to 1" and red or yellow. #appleseed

Check on your seeds when cold stratifying, if you start them early you get some good germination in the fridge. white nanking and sour cherry seeds at 4 months are ready to grow, and will get potted up under some lights until spring. #seedstarting

Plum seeds germinating last may. I found some in a bed that were planted two years before, the rest I let germinate in bags of damp peat moss in our root cellar before potting up. The seeds can have a long dormancy so you need to cold stratify a few months or more, then they wake up when the temperature increases. Some germinated in april, others through may and even into july so I started to check the bags once a week and pot them. Left over seed went back in the root cellar and we'll see how many come up this year. I would say that 80% of them germinated, so this winter I've gone with a longer stratification starting with one month warm. I'm talking about prunus americana, nigra, and several seedling plums I must have collected fruit from half a dozen plum trees, each its own seedlot, and also seed from the year before. I did the same stratification for our walnuts and butternuts, though they are recalcitrant meaning the seeds should be fresh and not dried, but similarly have a deep dormancy and can germinate in year two. #plumseeds #seedstarting #stratification

Paper birch, the cones crumble easily into thousands of seeds. cold stratify then plant shallow. starting these now to plant in april, at first in a tray that will go on a shady shelf in the greenhouse to be later pricked out and into pots or plugs #paperbirch #seedstarting

Ussurian pears from a row of old trees, collected for seedling rootstocks. also called harbin pear after the region in siberia where hansen collected them in the early 1900s, and brought them back to SD for breeding work #pear #rootstock #seedsaving

Hackberry. tasty thin candy coating even dried in the fridge for a few months. collected from the low branches of a 40 ft tall tree covered in fruit. here I cleaned some seed and started stratification by mixing in some damp peat moss, now three months in the fridge. I have left over seed so will add them to our seed shop. #hackberry

A friend sent me some quince to try, right before the postal strike. six weeks later the mail arrived and sure it's a bit wrinkly but otherwise fine. wow I didn't realize how citric it would taste, like a lemon pair. then I checked and they're used for marmalade so that sounds about right. and just a real pocket of seeds, quite different from other pome fruit.

Canada wild plum, or p. nigra cross. upright tree form, double bumps on the leaf margins, thin point in the leaf. seeds will be hybridized since it was in an orchard next to american plums, but still a good find, stratifying these in the root cellar. really wasn't sure until reviewing the photos, good to photo document a find. #wildplum #prunusnigra

Siberian stone pine, cleaning the seeds today. wow you get a lot of nuts in a cone, and they just crumble apart now that they've air dried. I used a board to sort out the pine nuts from the scales, the rounder nuts tend to roll into a pan first. now for 2 months warm then a few months cold stratification, in time for april/may in the greenhouse

Time to start seeds stratifying. wild american black currant, wild raspberry, wild sarsaparilla, and ribes aureum - a bush I think was crandall with huge berries. these soak overnight then go in the fridge with some damp peat moss until april. many perennial seeds need to go through this cold conditioning for a few months before they'll germinate. for these berry bushes, I'm going to try plug trays so this is enough seed for half a dozen trays of each.

Seed starting with a selection of prunus. #seedstarting #plumtree

Cleaning this elephant head amaranth, didn't find many seeds. still sifting through it, does anyone else find these are more ornamental vs a big seed crop, or did I need to start them earlier

Cleaning basil seed, I like to crush the flowers and then spread on a tilted cutting board. seeds roll, leaves stay. repeat. #seedsaving

Last summer I grew 30 types of basil. isolation is tricky, so only some of them were carefully netted to keep the seed true to type. so I have some fun seed lots of open pollinated basils, like lime x something else. people like weird experimental stuff, should I offer some of these on my seed shop? if so what should I call open pollinated maybe hybridized seed? a percentage will be lime basil, but some might be purple or have large leaves etc, only thing we know for sure is parent is known. no idea if this has value as a seed packet but i think it's cool. all of the heirloom tomato and peppers I grow are carefully isolated from bees to keep them true to type. btw dried lime basil leaves smell just like lime.

Added new seeds to my shop today, I collected all of these last fall locally in southern manitoba. kind of forgot to list them. #seeds

Prunus padus seeds with the distinct rugulose texture, maybe the easiest way to tell the trees apart from p. virginiana chokecherry.

Chia seeds as "indicators" for watering. the chia will droop when they need water, and they're easy to trim out when they get too big.

Chia seed from the bulk food store. funny it has a great germination rate, chia pet anyone?

Collecting wild licorice seeds, they hang around all winter. #wildlicorice

Wild tobacco seeds. i've had these seed pods in a paper bag in the fridge for a few months, they're nice and dry and to extract the seed I just crush them in a strainer. A few passes though the screen to clean them, some seeds like these are easy to process. #seedsaving

Stratifying seeds for the spring. 1. soak overnight 2. drain and add a big spoonful of sand/peat mix 3. date on the label 4. put in fridge and forget about it until april #seeds #perennials #stratification

Jerusalem artichoke (aka Sunchoke) seeds are back in stock! you can find them on our etsy shop and our website, oaksummit.etsy.com and www.oasksummitnursery.ca . Our shipping is worldwide and just a few dollars for seeds - and we have them in stock for over one hundred trees and perennials. We specialize in cold hardy plants! It's a good time now to get tree and perennial seeds started cold stratifying so they're ready to plant in the spring. #jerusalemsrtichokes #sunchokes

Some seeds need a while, these rocky mountain elderberry need some cycles of cold and warm stratification to germinate, they've been stratifying for about a year now and are still healthy seeds, after a few more months in the fridge they should be ready to germinate. Another option would have been plant them outside and just watch for germination over a couple of years. #elderberry

Checking in on germination testing, after a few weeks most of the bur oak are waking up. This process would be more optimal in some soil with more heat etc I have them near a window and it's a bit chilly. I think expecting a few weeks to a month is about right. Usually I fall plant, this is the first year I've store them in poly bags in bulk. They're slowly losing some weight but viability seems good after 4 months in cold storage. Will hold onto my stock until may at the latest and then anything left will get planted, acorns are recalcitrant (need to be fresh and not dried) and have some limited shelf life. One year I froze them in bags just below freezing, about -3C and germination was good, I wonder if that would let you store them for a year or more. #acorn #germination

Germination testing our bur oak acorns after 3 months in cold storage, at about ten days the radicals are starting to emerge. We had a bumper year and I collected maybe fifty pounds for seed, it's more than I need so these have been available is 24 and 100 packs that ship worldwide by letter mail for around $4-6 shipping. It's cool to think that some of these little guys could go on to live for hundreds of years.

Mix it up and then I usually soak over night and them squeeze out all the water until damp. if stratifying / cold condition seeds seems complicated it's not, let the seeds hydrate and store in the fridge for a few months. label. slightly damp is good, just so seeds don't dry out, doesn't take much moisture. sand, peat, paper towel in a poly bag. and that's just to add a buffer to keep them from losing moisture. #seedstratification

Red birch at 15 days #redbirch #growingtrees

Found an old box, I miss these guys. government funding was cancelled and the place was closed a few years ago. there are no Canadian gov tree seed sources left outside of BC, it's one of the reasons I started collecting my own. #treeseeds #seedsaving

Jerusalem artichoke seeds germinating. no stratification with ga-3 treatment. The usual method is the cold strat for 30 days. #jerusalemartichoke #seedstarting

Red birch, paper birch seeds germinating under lights. I have them just about on the surface, 60 days cold stratification. they take some time to size up, but should be 2 ft trees by the fall if all goes well #treeseeds

Here are some seeds that I stratified in sand this winter. I keep dates and notes about the source and year, and I put them all into a bag to be ready mid February. I also have March, April, May bag for seeds that were started later or need more time. I like to use sand for some seeds and paper towel for others. #seedstarting #seedstratification #treeseeds

New apple seeds on plates to dry overnight in the dehydrator. First is Siberian crab, second is an unknown variety, both fully cold hardy in zone 3. After the seeds are clean I dry them on low heat at around 90-100F for 1-2 days to get the moisture content down close to 10% and store in a fridge. #seedsaving #appleseed

Trying some stratification / conditioning with the paper towel method described by the late Dr. Norman Deno, who tested thousands of species to determine actual requirements to germinate and preferred this method over sand or peat. he classified most perennial seeds as 40-70 germinators, meaning 3 months at 40F then germination when moved to 70F. Interestingly, some are 70-40, and many require more cycles like 40-70-40-70 #seeds #seedsaving #seedgermination

Collected these crab apples today for seeds. it's a 30 yr old tree in a family yard, late hanging 1" apples always loaded, hardy to the tip in zone 3. Thinking of planting some and also offering the seeds. #seedsaving #crabapple

Jack pine are the easiest conifers to gather for seed because the serotinous cones stay closed until you warm them up. Collected year round they stay on the trees waiting for a forest fire. They also germinate without stratification, right after that fire they'll start regrowing the forest. #seeds #savingseeds #treeseeds #jackpine

Germination test on locally collected Caragana seeds at 4 days, looking good. The Siberian Pea Shrub is an easy one to start, the dry seeds are direct sown without any conditioning / cold stratification needed. #caragana #seed

Wild cucumber seeds. A native annual vine with alien pod looking fruit. #nativeplants #wildcucumber #seedsaving

I use pine cones for houseplant mulch. fun when one germinates, ephemeral though.

Some late hanging wild sarsaparilla seeds. They've been our most popular seeds on our shop this winter. #nativeplants

Here's how we stratify seeds. Best option is to plant them in the fall, if not just use your fridge. Seeds are stored in some sand slightly damp, and labelled with the type, date, how long they need, more details are better. These are the same poly bags we ship our seeds in, soak them in water for a day, add a couple tablespoons of sand and about one tablespoon of water.

Malus baccata (Siberian crabapple, the worlds most cold hardy apple) seeds at 40 days cold stratification about 2 days out of the fridge are starting to germinate. These little seeds are getting planted out into 200 cell trays under led light until may when they will go into our greenhouse, then into nursery beds in June. Last year we timed it differently and had some transplant shock so we learned a lot and we try again. Hoping for 80% survival to planting out so about 1000 seedlings with a head start on the year. Here in Manitoba we get about 3 months of growing frost free from June - Sep. All of these little tree are planned for rootstocks, if they're large enough we might even bud some this fall, they pull it off in warmer climates maybe it's possible here. #backyardorchard #backyardnursery #appleseed

So wild Licorice is around in the forest here (southern Manitoba zone 3) seems it's a cool permaculture plant with a root that somehow prepared tastes like Licorice and at the minimum it's a nitrogen fixer. I've collected some seed and added it to our site in case anyone wants to try growing it #seeds #nativeseeds

I have some extra seeds collected in the fall so they're available on the website. Pictured are choke cherry, dogwood, River birch and red pine. www.oaksummitnursery.ca

Virginia creeper seeds. I collected some in the fall and ran out of space in our seed beds, so these are available on oaksummitnursery.ca and our etsy shop https://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/oaksummit #seed #seeds #seedsaving #seedsavers #virginiacreeper