October in the Nursery: The Ups and Downs and Ups of Seed Collecting This Year
Greetings!
During the past spring, many plants in the Garden were loaded with nascent seeds, leaving us with high hopes for a bumper crop harvest. Those high hopes were realized with the Mahonias as they produced a large crop which we harvested. The rest of the seed crop, however, seemed to be a lost cause as summer wore on. Then, after two weeks of rain in August and an increased watering schedule, our hopes returned. Seeds began to grow again and mature. We collected much of the seed and planted it in communal pots in the nursery. Disappointingly, after 100 days in pots, none of the mahonia seeds germinated. Nevertheless, we continued to water and inspect them weekly.
At the end of August the Nursery received a very large amount of wild collected seed, most of it oak from Texas, Mexico and Arizona, thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Wally Wilkins, our President of the Board, and Art Douglas, a private collector from southern Arizona. Most of this material began to germinate within four to six weeks and, amazingly, those stubborn mahonia seeds also began to germinate! (I immediately placed washed chick grit on the soil surface to prevent dampening off of the mahonia seedlings.)
Some sprouting examples include Quercus tuberculata, Q. aristata, Q. jonesii, Q. magnoliifolia, Q. hinckleyi, Vitus arizonica, Erythrina flabelliformis, and last but definitely not least, Myrcianthes aff. fragrans (giant -- extremely cold hardy, as it never dies back -- from Scott Ogden's Mexico collection!).
The roller coaster never stops, but we hope many of these will be available in The John Fairey Garden Nursery in time for our second annual Budding Out Plant Sale and Festival in spring.
Happy Gardening,
