Keep your collected seed cool and moist until you plant it. Weevil grubs are fairly common in oak seed, so discard seed that has obvious small holes from weevils or with the cap still attached (with the exception of bur oak which retains its caps).įigure a percentage of good seed from your test lot to see how many total seed you need to collect to get the number of good seed you want. Viable seed should be firm and white or light tan inside with no signs of insect infestation. You may need pruning shears, or in the case of walnuts and hickories, a hammer to open the seed.
Before collecting a lot of seed, check the quality of the seed by cutting or cracking a few sample seed. Acorns, walnuts and hickory nuts will drop from the trees when ripe, so keep an eye on the ground. Some seed is already being eaten by squirrels or falling from trees, so now is a good time to start looking, although prime seed collection time is usually mid-September to October.
Be sure you have permission to pick up seed if it is private property. Start scouting for seed on the trees in your neighborhood, local parks or even cemeteries. Oaks, walnuts and hickories are a good starting point for using seed to grow new trees. If you have an interest in growing trees or just want to get in touch with the world of squirrels, you could consider gathering and planting some tree seed. What the forester likes is the squirrels don’t always re-find all the buried nuts, so a new tree may result. Foresters are rather fond of gray and fox squirrels – they collect seed and bury it in scattered locations around their home range for later excavation and use. We are perhaps most familiar with the activities of squirrels in gathering and storing seed like acorns, hickories and walnuts. Some seed will count on being eaten and then excreted by a bird. Some tree seed gets a lift on wind or water to new growing locations. As this long, hot summer heads toward fall, trees will be doing their best to place some new offspring on the landscape.
0 kommentar(er)
