I have been having very poor success rates with growing new maples from seeds for the past few years ... only a very few root in the bottom of the fridge during stratification and after sowing out in the greenhouse in various experimental composts Last year I had a host of seeds left (a lot of my own, and a good quantity from a fellow contributor to this forum from Canada) and I decided to sow them out in my meadow to let Mother Nature stratify and grow them for me. I mixed a little peat into the soil, sowed and covered with a light peat mix. Today I see that I have loads and loads of new little seedlings just beginning to make an appearance for me I have also had better success in past years with seeds which were left outside over winter in seed trays In future methinks any seeds I have to sow will be outside in ground Anybody else had similar experiences?
whis4ey, I would agree with your statement. I have much better success with nature doing it's thing with the seeds. below are some pictures of seedlings coming up in an established bed. the variegated seedling are from last year. I think I collected 84 variegated seedlings from last years batch. Ed
I fully agree with you both, I have not seen any difference in germination between cold stratified in the fridge and 'nature-does-it-best' approaches. Thus, with 'some' encouragement from my wife, I have decided to do it all outside. However I prefer to pick up the samaras from the tree since I want to track progeny. So my compromise approach is to sow them in trays, with labels, and place the trays outside. Of course I do not have to worry about squirrels, chipmunks, deer, bisons, neighbor's dogs and cats, floods, earthquakes, swine flu,......., just the backbirds for which some netting suffice. Gomero
Also, boar and hare. (Hares?) Both of whom can do a great deal of damage, quickly. Actually the boar tore up great swaths of my field a few days ago, not much more than 10 m from the start of collection maples... Yet, surely they have cats in the south west, otherwise it'd be a plague of voles, no? :)
