Cold stratifying (winter replication) your new acorn seeds to grow into Oak trees is fairly simple...especially with the resealable bags that the we provide that the acorns come in.
Materials Required
- Non-fertilized medium
- A little water
That's it!
Now when it comes to "non-fertilized medium" we mean any type of soil or dirt that doesn't have any fertilizers in it so nothing like miracle grow.
The best, and cheapest, that I like to use is coco coir. This is the same stuff that those little Jiffy seed start pods are made of and you can buy bricks of them online for fairly cheap and it can be constantly re-used. Sand is also a decent choice if you have some lying around.
Instructions for cold stratifying
- Inspect the bag for any grubs that may have slipped by and remove them as well as any acorns that have holes in them
- Wet the medium pretty well. If you're using coco coir, then you may need to wait for it to expand
- Take a handful and give it a good hard squeeze to get the majority of the water out. We don't want the medium to be wet. Just ever so slightly moist.
- Put the handful of freshly squeeze medium into the bag and repeat until the bag is decently full
- Seal the bag and put it in the fridge for as long as it says on the back of the bag
Instructions for sowing
There are really two ways to sow the acorns. I've tried both ways with mixed results so I'll leave them both here and let you decide
Option 1)
After removing from the fridge, simply put the contents of our resealable bag into a clear zip-lock type of back and set it somewhere warm with at least some light.
The up side to doing it this way, at least in my experience, is that you the germination rate is really high and I've gotten easily 80%. The down side is that transplanting from the bag to a small pot is really delicate and the baby trees aren't a fan and you'll lose some during this process
Option 2)
Is putting the acorns directly into their nursery pots. The downside here is that the overall germination rate is a bit lower, buuuut you're not going to lose any during transplanting.
