Wintersowing is often promoted as seeds in some dirt, inna milk-jug. Sometimes its just not enough room. Also some seeds don't sleep all snuggy in their pot. Yesterday I planted some of the smaller cousins of chestnut. Castenea pumila (chinkapin). All chestnut seed do not ever go truely dormant. I had them in the fridge with a little peat in a tupperware. They were growing roots and sucking all the moisture out of their nest. I mixed up equal parts of chicken-grit, bark mulch, and peat for their soil. I laid them out with a little soil under the nuts and planted rather deeply. I used a nine inch paper-white pan and nested the pan with soil in it into a garden bed, buried up to the rim. I covered the bermed in pot with a liberal mulch of leaves. All this bundling and canoodling is to keep these nuts from a freeze. They will die the first year if frosted. This is not true for many forest trees. There are other woody plants I will (or have) wintersown this year. I will also try to explain what & why I do what I do.
I do hope those babies will grow and prosper after all that you've done for them, Coppice. Good luck!
Oh my, I do admire your knowledge and ability to grow trees--especially winter sowing of seeds and nuts. I wonder if the chinkapin is the same one we have here. I'll have to look it up (and thank you for the botanical name!). We have four Mexican Buckeyes started and growing with all the vegetable starts in the guest bedroom. The Buckeye is a tree native to Texas, and has lovely blossoms in the spring and the leaves turn red and orange in the fall.
I fell into this. Its never good to presume prior intent by me. I am at least sort-of a student, so I like my second trial to work better than the first. My neighborhood Laconia NH KFC had a border of rosa rugosa. I tinkered on and off and found that rose seed need to sleep a winters rest in the wet and cold, before they germinate. I keep running around with hippies. finding ways for new faces to hug and love on trees has been a labor of love for several decades. I have given away bonsai for like twenty years. Lately it has been building food forests. I sent out just about all my chestnut this fall in give aways. But I held back some chinkapin that I nested a day ago. My current crop of rosa rugosa went into its wintersown tote a few days back. it is a tough seed that laughs at frost.
Today I wintersowed into clear totes: Ginseng, Goldenseal, Sassafras, H Virginiana (fall blooming witch hazel), H Vernalis (spring blooming with hazel), Corylus (American Hazel nut). All of these are much tougher than chestnut and prosper better from the widest cycle mother nature can provide. I have two more that I want to trench and berm in, they will await the next thaw.