Well, it’s that time of year again -time to start some seeds. I actually think that I should have started a month ago. Oh well, the trees will just be a little smaller. On the left is a bag of Japanese Black Pine seeds and on the right is a bag of Green Atlas Cedar seeds. I’ve never started either from seed, but last year I started a California native pine, the Knobcone, from seed as well as about 50 oaks.

The thing about growing seed is that they go from taking up no room in your yard to taking up a lot in only a few months. Once the seedlings germinate I take them out of the flats that they started in, cut off the tap root and plant them in individual containers. This is a time consuming process which leads to a lot of waiting. Basically after that transfer there is nothing to be done to the trees except water and fertilize for two years.

For the oaks that I started, I just dug up a few of them to trim the roots…that didn’t go so well. I think that of the ones that I dug about half of them died. I think the problem was that I waited until they had already started sending out new spring growth. Of the ones that I planted in my front yard a few years ago most survived when I dug them out in the fall.

To cut down on the amount of room that I have to devote to the pine seedlings I took half of them up to my fathers house. He has a large yard and doesn’t mind having a few more plants around…of course he thinks that fertilizing is unnatural and that watering should only be done once per week…so I’m assuming that some of those trees are going to die, but if they don’t I might have some even more interesting trees. I find that I sometimes like what a little neglect does to a tree. In any case I still have about twenty of the pines in my own yard.

I don’t really know what I’ll do about this year’s crop, but I can cross that bridge when I get to it. For now I’m going to throw all of them into some water to soak for a couple days before I put them in soil.

Tag: seed