plum seeds germinating last may

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