Autumn sowing

To cultivate forest garden plants from seed is a science in itself, with as many rules as exceptions. A good technique I figured tell about in this post is to use the autumn sowing. Unlike annuals, where many are adapted to warmer climates, forest garden plants usually permanent and well-adapted to our cold climate. Many of them want to be absolutely sure that it is really spring when they germinate so that they do not happen to sprout a warm autumn and then freeze and die in winter. Therefore, they must first go through a more or less long period of cooling (Thus, a whole winter), for them to be viable. Exposing the seeds for this cold treatment is called stratification. A very simple way of stratifying the seeds is to sow them now in the autumn.

I usually take a plastic brim and put a newspaper in the bottom, refill with a mixture of 1 Some flat land and 1 Some little coarse sand, so the seeds and cover with a thin layer of såjordsblandningen. Then I water carefully and if there is a risk that seeds from other plants (t.ex. björk) ending up in såbrättet I cover it over with fiber cloth until all other plants have released their seeds. The brim can be left outdoors all winter. If you want to get started a little earlier, you can take in the brim of a greenhouse forward spring, but I usually do not bother about it, but leave them there until the seeds germinate, which can happen anywhere between March and May, depending on how hot it is out.

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Most perennial vegetables (except legumes, which have sometimes proved itself to rot in the soil during winter) I reproduce in this way and it is easy to get a hundred new plants from a single såbrätte. This year winter planted example, I:

Even seeds from trees and shrubs usually need to be stratified and it works great to winter seed from wild cherry (Prunus avium), havtorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) and Elaeagnus umbellata (Elaeagnus umbellata) to stone pine (Pinus sylvestris) and all the other nut varieties we can grow in our climate. Just with nuts apply, however, to make såbrättet mussäkert, so as not to lose the nuts for the winter.