…..and I was NOT disappointed! Wtg Jack. One of my favorite listens so far along with the food forests episodes.

that financial guy is still pretty interesting. But you are right this was a good one.

Mr A,

I would suggest if you are stratifying the seed to plant in the spring after danger of frost is past if you are direct seeding. Otherwise start the seedlings in tall pots or tree tubes like “conetainers”. You could start them in growout beds with 1′ deep wood duff, or good high organic content soil, then transplant the seedlings from there. If you elect for the growout beds, you will run less risk of damaging or inhibiting the taproot.
Cold moist stratification for 1-4 months, the stratified seed should germinate in 30-60 days.
In nursery practice, unstratified seed is sown in fall, stratified seed is sown in spring.
Seeds will sprout once dormancy is broken, even at temps as low as 36F so be careful you don’t leave them in the fridge too long or else you will have sprouted seed and the rootlet will likely be damaged during transplantation.

Nick

I would prefer to always overseed an area and allow the strongest, most adapted organisms to be the dominant ones in the system. So, yes overseeding a large area would produce a better pool of genetic diversity and vigor. But the listener may have a different situation. If we are talking small scale, 1-10 trees, well the chances of that happening in that size area are slim. It seems to me that you would likely have better results if you started a lot of seedlings using the method I suggested and then picking from those which ones are growing the best, transplanting them to their locations, and even possibly planting 3 per hole, then over the next year or 3, thin the weaker trees out from each hole until you have a single strong specimen.

Really it all comes down to application. I don’t always use a 22 oz framing hammer, sometimes I need a 3# sledge, or a peening hammer. Some applications using the Shepard approach makes the most sense, but not everybody has 20-200 acres to plant apples in.

Environmental – Are there environmental issues with the soil, pollution, spraying etc… Seedlings are much more susceptible to adverse growing conditions

Predation – Can you protect the seedlings from mice, voles, moles, deer, squirrels, rabbits? Don’t scatter apple seeds when migratory birds are passing through that will descend on your field in the thousands and eat all the seed.

Weather – Are you planting at a time of year that is conducive to growing the seedlings? If you want seedlings to get started in june, don’t plant seeds in the ground unless you have a few pounds that you don’t mind loosing.

Temperatures – Can the seedlings survive the temperature shifts at the particular time you are planting? Will the seed germinate in the ground at the time of year you are wanting them to go in the ground?

Space – Do you have enough land to utilize the method of broadscale overseeding of the tree species?

Financial risk/reward – And it all comes down to the cost. Can you bear the cost of the seed? If you cannot bear the cost of loosing 50%-90% of the seed you plant, then use a different method.

I know I listed a lot of reasons to not use this method, please understand that I think the genetic selection process that you put the population through is FAR superior to any other method. I wish I could afford to plant all fruit trees this way, but understand you could end up with staggeringly low numbers of highly productive individuals. You will end up with a far greater number of regionally adapted individuals. But you need to decide if you want regionally adapted mediocre producing trees, or not. It is a genetic roulette, and very complicated. I will tell you though, in the development of my farm, I am willing to spend the extra money to plant 1000 trees for the 1 that I will eventually keep for a lifetime. I would rather pick the best 0.10% of a gene pool to procreate on my land. There are so many variables at play that it is hard to encapsulate an answer in this format. But hopefully this has helped a little.