Collect Your Own Shrub and Tree Seeds

Pick fruit or seeds mostly by hand from the plant. Implements such as shaking poles, extended cutters and secateurs aid gathering. Harvest smaller fruits directly into a basket or bucket. Spread a groundsheet around the base of a plant to allow easy recovery of fruit or seed shaken from the plant. Collect seed promptly to avoid loses from fungi or pests. Remove debris to facilitate the cleaning process. Avoid damaging trees. Seed Cleaning Fleshy fruits include berries, drupes, pomes and any with seed enclosed in flesh. Separate the seed with copious amounts of water and then dry. Do this immediately after collection to avoid damaging fermentation. If some storage is unavoidable, spread fruit out on the floor of a well-ventilated enclosure. Stir frequently to avoid heat generation and fermentation.

Seeds of species with thin flesh may be dried and planted with skins intact. After initial washing, spread these seeds out in the sun or in a warm location.

The flesh is hand-squeezed or mashed by a wooden block, rolling pin or fruit press. Alternatively, remove fruit by rubbing it against or through a screen. Superimpose screens with the lowest one on a mesh sufficiently small to contain the seeds and use a stream of water simultaneously to carry flesh away.

Simply dry cones to open them and remove the seeds. Separate scales and other debris from seed.

Dry fruits may or may not require cleaning when collected fully dry. Some such seed requires drying and additional processing steps. Consider wearing a dust mask to avoid breathing in dust when processing dry seeds of many species. Store your seed between 32° and 41°F (0 and 5°C) at a constant temperature.

Note by Traute Klein, biogardener:

In Canada, we are allowed to dig up and take home plants which grow in ditches along public roads. Trees and shrubs which have self-seeded themselves are cut down when the ditch is mowed anyway, so digging them up saved them from getting killed. I have dug up dozens of trees in ditches close to my 20 acre farmland. You just need to make sure that you are not in a protected area like a nature reserve or a provincial or federal park.

My readers tell me that the rules in the United States differ from place to place, so do not do any digging up until you have checked with the authorities of the community or state.

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