I grabbed the "berries" section of the seed collection for this first round. I had planned to do an assortment of strawberries, but I'm pretty sure #5 wanted to help with that. So tonight I went for an assortment of seeds that will provide long-term perennial food if the seeds grow and the plants survive their first few winters.
A few notes here. This year I am pushing the limits of how many seeds one can plant into each container. I want to get as much bang for my buck as I can, and especially with varieties like these that could take several years before we get to harvest anything, I want to get as many as possible without using up lots of containers and tons of soil. These numbers are not normal - please don't follow my seed numbers this year!!
I am also putting the date and the seed count on the containers. This will give me a better idea of germination rates for my seeds, as well as being able to keep track of when sprouts come up, when I transplant, and when I harvest for better record keeping. This is not needed for people just wanting to get in to winter sowing. It's just an added project I'm including this year.
So let me introduce you to the varieties we've started with!
The Victoria rhubarb jug contains seeds from our own plants that we had bought as roots from the local store. They weren't big enough this year for much of a harvest, but we did manage to get enough for a single batch of Rhubarb Coffee Cake. They produced a lot of seeds, and I made every attempt to save them all. We did dig the plants up and brought them over here, but by the time we did so, it was pretty late in the season. I planted them beside the garage here (East facing) but then it froze shortly thereafter. I don't know if they will survive the winter to come up in the spring or if we will be starting completely from scratch with our rhubarb. I put 60 Victoria rhubarb seeds in there where I'd usually probably only put nine.
You've probably never heard of Matt's Rhubarb. It's what I'm calling it for now. A friend of our family bought his first house a few months after we bought ours. His came with a giant rhubarb patch. It had clearly been left to grow for many years with no harvesting or maintenance. My grandmother grew rhubarb, my mom has a plant. When my mom saw this one though she was dumbfounded. She said she'd never seen a plant so large. It was easily five feet by five feet with leaves bigger than you could imagine. It also happened to have a giant seed stalk with dry seeds. Our new home-owner friend isn't a fan of rhubarb and said he was just going to rip it all out. My mother argued for the sake of the delicious recipes to be had of such large stalks, and asked if she could take the seeds. She brought me this giant stock of dried seeds, and sure enough, these seeds are about 2-3 times the size of my own seeds (and the seeds purchased from commercial seed companies). Wow! So I have no idea what kind it is/was, and I will be growing them side-by-side with my Victoria seeds this year to see if they are hardier or bigger right from the start, or if that's due to years of rampant growth. I only managed to get 40 seeds in the milk jug (again, I'd usually only plant nine).
Apples can be grown from seed. I've seen so many people discouraged from attempting to grow apples from seed because "you never know what you'll get" and "it could come out small and bitter, like a crab apple" and "it takes so long, just buy a tree from a nursery." My best argument? Macintosh apples were "found" as a seed-grown wild apple tree... Yup, that's right, one of the best selling apples in the US was accidentally grown from seed (grown from an apple that fell on the ground - not engineered in a lab by professional plant breeders). From there, grafts were made from the original tree, and all Macintosh apples are now clones of that original tree (grown from scions and grafted, not GMO/laboratory cloning). And really, I've heard of some folks getting apples off seed-grown apple trees in 3-5 years. That's about how long it took my parents to get apples off of the original three apple trees they bought and planted on their property - and those were decent sized trees. One of them only produced fruit a year or two ago for the first time (and they planted the trees in the late 90's). Besides, I'm up for a good surprise. Worst case scenario, if I wait five years and the tree puts out gross fruit, I can cut it down and use if for apple-wood smoking in the smoker, or cut up the twigs and sell them as pet chews (because apple branches are a favorite among chinchillas and other small furry pets). Then I can use the stump to graft on other varieties. Anyway, the seeds in this year's winter sowing container came from an assortment of store-bought apples, and the apples from the tree in the west yard. It's possible they're cross pollinated with crab apples, but it'll still be worth it to see what we come up with. You never know, maybe we'll find a real winner! I put 46 seeds in this container (usually I'd put 9-12 seeds). With such small space between the seeds, I will have to transplant them pretty quickly to avoid root tangling.
I don't know much about Black Elderberry. I know it's perennial and that you can make jam from it. That's really all I need to know up front. With such a large acreage, I'm sure I can find a place for it if it comes up. A quick internet search shows that elderberry is tolerant of planting near black walnut trees, so that opens up all kinds of possibilities! I planted 25 seeds in this container.
The red raspberries I don't hold out much hope for. First off, they're older seeds (from 2014), and it wasn't until I'd sprinkled 80 seeds across the soil in the container that I stopped to look up with they should be covered or surface sown... and I read that raspberries won't grow from dried seed. It has to be fresh. Well, here's a container of very old raspberry seeds that were incredibly well dried... I didn't bother to chemically treat or scarify the seeds at all. In fact, I didn't even cover them up. They're surface sown. Since the container was already labeled, and the seeds already in the soil, I figure I've lost nothing putting the container out there. If nothing grows, I learned something new (fresh seeds only). And if something grows, I'll consider myself incredibly lucky, and run with it. I'm not sure if I should attempt winter sowing the black raspberries that I pulled off of our vines last fall when I planted them here at the homestead.
Anyway, that means five containers have a grand total of 251 seeds planted (171 if you don't count the red raspberries). That averages out to 40-50 seeds per container. I'm looking forward to many more containers going out in the coming weeks and months!
I also have a kitchen window herb garden in the plans. More on that soon!