Free Gardening Tips

Fruit tree are usually very beautiful in spring and in fall. Spring because they are full of flowers, and fall because they are full of fruits.

Many species, such as crabapple, cotoneaster, prunus and cherry, are beauty themselves. Often such specimen can cost alot in specialized garden nursery. One way to cheaply acquire a tree is to propagate them. Fruit tree can be reproduce with seeds or cuttings. Seeds is the easiest but longest method. You can buy seeds or collect them.

The best time to gather fruit tree seeds is in fall, when leaves are starting to drop. At this time, you are certain that the fruits are mature, hence the seeds are also. So, you can pick as many fruits as you need seeds. Some species, have more then one seed per fruit.

The method to clean and prepare the seeds is simple. For fleshy fruit, such as cotoneaster cranberry, crabapple or cherry, you can fill a bowl of hot water, but not boiling water. In the water, you gather the fruits and rub them with your fingers till the flesh is fully removed from the seeds.

Once you have separate the loose flesh pulp from the seeds, you can gather the seeds in a new bowl, pour some boiling water on it, to clean the seeds. Empty the water, keep the seeds, and repeat the process of boiling water.

You will then need to sterilize the seeds. This can be accomplish by laying the seeds on a paper towel on a cookie tray. On a sunny day, you leave the seeds in the biscuit tray under the sun, for at least 4 hours and till they become dry to to the touch.

You can store your seeds, in a dry ziplock bag in the veggie compartment of your fridge till you are ready to germinate/sow your seeds. For further germination instructions you can refer to my articles on my website.