Growing with Pioneers: Seeds in the soil

The RAIN Pioneers Programme encourages schools and communities to plant and maintain their own reforestation, rewilding or ecosystem restoration project.

Engaging directly with the cycles and processes of growth in the natural world is an effective way to develop a real and lasting sense of belonging, participation and love of our world. Whether you’re planting a few acorns in pots, or building a series of seedbeds, now is a great time to get your first crop of trees growing!

Oak is easy to germinate and makes a great first experience of growing trees from seed. Oak trees support a vast array of life. Its a mast year for oak, meaning there are huge numbers of acorns on the ground. Make sure the acorns are smooth, healthy looking and not damaged. It's fine if they are showing signs of germination already. You can do a ‘float test’, by putting all the acorns in a large bucket of water - discard those that float. As long as your acorns are protected from scavenging squirrels and other critters, they should be on their way to oak-hood by May next year.

Aim to collect and sow your acorns as soon as you can. They shouldn’t be stored for longer than a week or so - if you do need to store them, keep them in open trays or breathable cloth bags to avoid over-heating the seed. You can sow acorns in any pot of at least 1litre capacity as long as it has holes in the base; think outside of the plastic plant pot and use upcycled materials.

The November issue of Pioneers Monthly has a guide to growing oak trees in recycled tetrapak cartons, or you can scale up by building your own seed beds. You can also make acorn ink - check out the activity from The Children's Forest!

For more info, have a look at this excellent resource from the TVC: https://treegrowing.tcv.org.uk/grow/tree-recipes/pedunculateoak

Sweet chestnuts are abundant right now - not only does the sweet chestnut tree produce delicious chestnuts, this is also a useful species for coppice. Although sweet chestnut is not native, it's been here for long enough to have begun to support a range of fungi, lichen and invertebrates, and is predicted to do well under climate change. Info on sweet chestnut can be found here: https://www.futuretrees.org/sweet-chestnut/. You can sow them direct (following the method for oak) or pack them in leaf mould in covered buckets (be sure to hang the buckets up to avoid nibbling) until you’re ready to sow in spring.

Many tree seeds are dormant, and need to be pretreated to break the dormancy and allow them to germinate; this is called 'stratification'. (More on seed dormancy and stratification here.) Now is a great time to collect seed that needs a long period to break the natural dormancy of the seed.

Hawthorn, dog rose and blackthorn can all be gathered now. All these species take a long time before they are ready to sow, so it’s good to get them going as soon as you can! They are great fun to process; messy and interactive! But be sure to wear good thick gloves whilst collecting as all three are thorny.

Again look at these guides from the TCV: Hawthorn, Dog Rose, Blackthorn. The Tree Council's seed collection guides are great too and can be found here.

Next month we'll be looking at more species to grow from seed or cuttings, including willow and holly.

The Winter Planting Season Starts Now!

Tree-planting season is underway, with National Tree Week 28 November – 6 December) at the end of the month. It's a perfect time to learn about #treeplanting in a hands-on way.

Growing our #FutureForests

You can find or add your own local #treeplanting events on this handy map created by The Future Forests Network.

Saplings are available!

Community groups can take advantage of generous sapling offerings from the TCV (The Conservation Volunteers), while The Woodland Trust is accepting applications for saplings to be distributed in March 2021.

Have you already been growing? Are you planning to plant soon?

Let the UK Tree growing groups network know here. They can help ensure your saplings go where they’re most needed.

No sapling left behind.

There's no need to waste saplings! We saw during the early phase of lockdown how intuitively people came together to weave networks of mutual aid and support the most vulnerable. If we are to stay on track for national and global planting targets, we must create similar networks to ensure saplings always find a home. You can help save some of the saplings destined for the incinerator through the Save the Oaks campaign.