Nature and Gardening

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All things green, outdoors, and nature-y. Whether it's animals in their natural habitat, hiking trails and mountains, or planting a little garden for yourself (and everything in between), you can talk about it here.

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Lindera benzoin germinating (beehaw.org)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by LallyLuckFarm to c/greenspace

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[Image description: the very first growth from a Lindera benzoin seed has just emerged]

Here's a shot of one of the hundreds of seeds I transplanted yesterday. Lindera benzoin is also known as spicebush and is a critical plant for the spicebush swallowtail butterfly

We had them cold stratifying (a process that involves storing at low temperatures to overcome seed dormancy) in a five gallon bucket in a roughly 3 foot/ 1 meter pile of wood chips from the drop we had last year. They were stored in a substrate of aged wood chips, compost, rabbit droppings, and biochar we had soaked in our duck pond by using a recycled onion sack.

They were removed from the bucket and transferred to an air prune box, where we'll grow them for a year before planting a good portion of them on the property and (fingers crossed) sell the rest to pay for my plant addiction.

Edit to show how cool the spicebush swallowtail is

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[–] LallyLuckFarm 3 points 8 months ago

Thank you for the well wishes! I've got one 5 year old pawpaw that's started suckering its colony but want more genetic variety for sure. And yeah, lots going on around here that I try to stay on top of.

Best of luck with all those sprouts, and I encourage you to post about things as they're developing; I'm always happy to help and there are some other folks on here I consider much better educated about plants than me.