Dear Dot: How Can I Plant a Tree from Seed?

Dear Dot, 

Can you recommend a good book with some information about growing trees from seed?

–Margaret

The Short Version: Jordan Jones from Mad Cat Farm in Kansas (with the motto: “Radical Resilience Starts in Your Backyard”) grows a wide variety of unusual species and is delighted to help you, Margaret. He offers up a reading list as well as some of his own specific steps for planting trees: choose seeds based on what grows locally, prepare them through scarification and cold stratification to mimic natural seasonal cycles, then plant seeds indoors or outdoors. Jones shares how to harden off seedlings, and protect young trees from wildlife. If his instructions seem like more work than you’re ready to do, you can always, he suggested, just pop a seed into soil and let Mother Nature take over. After all, she’s got a pretty great track record. 

Dear Margaret,

What a delightful question! As that old chestnut goes, “the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The next best time is now.” And “now” really means now. As I write this from my home in the North, the snow is piling up outside, but we needn’t wait til the weather warms to begin the process of planting a tree under whose shade we hope eventually to sit. 

A few years ago, Dot planted four paw paw trees, thanks to a local environmentalist who, keen to restore populations of these formerly ubiquitous and beloved trees, offered up seeds to anyone interested. Just one of those trees survived. Clearly, I’m no expert at nurturing tree growth, but I found someone who is. So we will not only offer up a selection of books that will tell you how to grow a tree, but also some straightforward instructions, courtesy of Jordan Jones, a regenerative tree farmer in Kansas. 

Jordan Jones started off in tech (AI! 30 years ago!), but has always had a thing for trees, he told Dot. “When I was a little kid, I loved trees, and I would always plant tree seeds and dig up seedlings,” he said. And so, when he relocated from Ontario, Canada, back to Kansas (where he was born), he founded Mad Cat Farm (named for a beloved feline with a cantankerous personality). “Over years and years, I pretty much was studying biology, biochemistry, ecology, regenerative agriculture, all forms of agriculture, and just kind of became a plant nerd and a tree nerd.” Today, Jones applies that knowledge and nerdiness to genetic resilience in fruit and nut trees. 

His market, he says, is the “advanced” backyard grower, which is potentially you, Margaret, and people like you! Who better to help us?

At Mad Cat, Jordan explained, he deals with the climatic and environmental realities of the present. With climate change and disease already impacting what grows and thrives, Jordan is interested in “what’s going to happen when that seed starts to grow?  What is going to end up surviving? Because that's the tree of the present and the future.” 

How can you best ensure that the seed you plant survives and thrives, Margaret? Jordan has plenty to say on this topic! 

How To Decide What Seed To Plant:

It starts with a simple question, Jordan said: What trees have you seen growing near you? “If you’ve seen pears and apples, then you can grow those. Have you seen peaches? Then you can grow those.” Even if you haven’t, our never-say-never tree farmer says you can still try. He’s currently at work trying to grow oranges in Kansas. “No one's done that, but I figure somewhere in the tens of thousands of little seed genomes, there may be a trait that can survive a winter here.” 

How Do I Prepare a Seed for Planting?

“Some [seeds] need something called scarification,” Jordan explained. This breaks the hard carapace of the seed to allow germination. You scarify by sanding or filing the edges of a seed, “the literal scarring of the seed tissue.” For instance, Jordan said, “a peach [pit] has a very hard coating around the actual seed inside. And so you could sand or file the edges to help it break loose.” It’s not absolutely necessary, he said, but sometimes it helps. Nature creates scarification when a freeze/thaw cycle cracks the carapace, or when a seed passes through an animal’s digestive tract. To know whether or not your seed needs scarification, Jordan recommends consulting a good book (see his list of suggestions, below, including online pdfs).

But that’s not all. “Every seed has basically a code that it needs before it will unlock, so to speak,” Jordan explained. “And that code is basically the process that the progression of seasons takes it through naturally.” For native plants in a temperate climate, we can mimic that code through something called cold stratification. In nature, Jordan said, squirrels and winter do the work for us, burying seeds in the soil, which will freeze (pausing germination) then thaw. For us, in anticipation of spring planting, we might store seeds in a damp potting medium in a refrigerator — small seeds could be placed on a damp paper towel, while larger seeds might do better in moist peat moss. Place the seeds and their medium in a plastic bag that allows for some but not all of the humidity to escape (puncture a few small holes or leave partially open). Leave for a month or so. If the seeds start to sprout, it’s time to plant them, either indoors or out. 

How To Plant Your Seed

It’s pretty easy, Jordan said, to plant your seeds indoors. Pop them in soil, about the same depth you would expect outdoors — roughly twice the seed size. “Trees aren’t picky,” he said. If you’re planting in an unheated garage or shed, use a heat mat. If you’re planting outdoors, do it in spring, and warming temperatures will wake up the seed.

Moving It Outdoors

If you plant indoors during the winter months, there’s a process called “hardening off,” Jordan explained, which is where you acclimatize your indoor seedling to outdoor conditions. “There are usually going to be temperature differences and environmental differences, so you would incrementally put it outside, [starting] let's say, for half a day.” (Avoid freezing temperatures, he warned.) Increase the amount of time you leave your seedling outdoors until you can leave it overnight. At that point, you only need to bring it back inside if you expect particularly frigid temps. In addition to getting your tiny tree used to the cold, you’re also acclimating it to direct sunshine. Once the weather has warmed up enough that you can leave your seedling outside full-time, put it in a sheltered location, and let it adjust. After several days, it's ready to go to its final destination into the soil.

What Then?

Once you’ve planted your seedlings, Jordan said, “baby them.” Water if there isn’t much rain, and protect them from wildlife. “I would use something like a tree tube,” Jordan said. “Or you can take something called hardware cloth, which is basically just half-inch or quarter-inch mesh, and build a little protector out of that.” Your goal is to thwart primarily deer and rabbits, which both find a tender seedling delectable. “You really need to protect it up to probably five feet, because deer can easily reach that tall,” he said. “Keep it [consistently] watered for the first year to two years, and keep it thoroughly protected until it's over six, seven feet tall.” At that point, he said, if a branch gets nibbled by a deer, the tree will still keep on growing. 

In summer, you’ll see a tree’s growth as its branches extend. But, he said, “the fall is where it really stores its energy down in the root system, and it pushes out new roots. And it doesn't look like it's doing anything, but it's actually doing probably the most useful thing for our purpose.”

And what is our purpose? A lovely, vibrant, healthy tree, planted by you, Margaret.

Shadily,

Dot

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