Place the persimmon seeds in a plastic sandwich bag or glass jar with an equal amount of moist sand or peat. Store the bag or jar in the refrigerator for three months. This cold-treatment is known as stratification and breaks the seed's dormancy, which can inhibit germination. Start it late in the fall or early in the winter, about five months before the last spring frost. Throughout the three months, periodically check the medium, and spray it with a water-filled bottle so it stays moist the entire time.
Put
peat pellets in a tray or cake pan that's filled with 1 inch of water
and allow the pellets to soak up the moisture and expand. Discard any
water that's left over, and then press one persimmon seed in each pellet
to a depth of 1 inch. Place the tray in a clear, plastic bag to create a
humid environment. The seeds germinate in two to three weeks in dark or
light conditions in a temperature range of 68 to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.
Remove
the plastic bag as soon as the seeds germinate. Place the tray with the
peat pellets in a sunny, south-facing window so the seedlings can grow.
The ideal temperature during this phase is 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit
during the day and 55 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Periodically
rotate the tray so the seedlings grow upright and don't have to reach
for the light. Alternatively, suspend two, 40-watt fluorescent lamps
about 6 inches above the seedlings and keep the lamps on for 16 hours a
day. As the seedlings grow, move the lamps up so they always remain at
least 6 inches above the young plants.
Fill
4-inch pots up to one-third of the way with moist potting mix when the
seedlings are 3 inches tall. Place a peat pellet with a seedling in the
center of each pot and continue filling the remaining two-thirds of the
pot with moist potting mix. Keep the soil moist as the seedling grows.
Put the two handfuls of the peat into a plastic sandwich bag — the type with a zip-lock closure. Drop five ginkgo seeds into the bag, close it and set it aside in an area that remains around 68 degrees Fahrenheit and it won’t be disturbed.
Keep checking it to ensure that the peat remains barely moist and, after one to two months, put the bags of ginko biloba seeds in the refrigerator and allow them to remain there for another one to two months. This process is known as “stratification.” Basically, it imitates what the seeds would go through in nature.
When the stratification period is over, remove the ginko biloba seeds from the bag and lightly sand the seed coat — not too much, just enough to allow moisture to penetrate. Drop them into a bowl of water and let them sit for 24 hours.
The next day, fill a 4-inch planting pot with coarse sand, or a mixture of equal parts of coarse sand and perlite. If you’re up for trying something else, I highly recommend Foxfarm Ocean Forest Potting Soil.
Run water over whichever medium you’ve chosen until it’s drenched and water drains from the bottom of the pot. Set it aside to drain completely while you sterilize the seeds.
Make a solution of 9 parts of water and 1 part of household bleach and toss the ginko biloba seeds into a bowl of the solution. Allow them to sit in it for about 10 minutes and then remove them and rinse with clear water (a colander comes in handy here). Use paper towels to blot them dry.
Plant the ginkgo seeds very shallow – just barely cover them with sand. Place the pots in a bright area but out of direct sun, indoors, keep the soil moist but not wet and your ginkgo biloba seeds should germinate within three weeks.
If you prefer, you can plant the seeds outdoors, without stratification, in fall and “good germination should take place in spring,” according to Michael A. Dirr and Charles W. Heuser, Jr. in The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation (the bible for plant propagators and a book I highly recommend).
If you decide to germinate with stratification, wait until there is absolutely no danger of frost before hardening the seedlings off and then planting in spring.
Hackberry seeds have a deep dormancy within them, this requires a degree of patience to overcome and it is usually quite easy to get high levels of germination if the correct procedures are followed.
Soak the seeds in water for 24 hours and drain.
Next prepare a free draining substrate into which the seeds are to be mixed, moist sand is thought to give the best results for this although you could use a 50/50 mixture of compost and sharp sand, The chosen substrate needs to be moist (but not wet), if you can squeeze water out of it with your hand it is too wet and your seeds may drown and die.
Mix the seeds into the substrate, making sure that their is enough volume of material to keep the seeds separated. Place the seed mixture into a clear plastic bag (freezer bags, especially zip-lock bags are very useful for this -provided a little gap is left in the seal for air exchange) If it is not a zip-lock type bag it needs to be loosely tied. Then write the date on the bag so that you know when the pretreatment was started.
The seeds require a cold period to break the dormancy that is naturally found within them, this is easily achieved by placing the prepared bag of seeds and compost mix in the fridge (4 Celsius or 39F) for around 12 weeks. It is quite possible for the seeds to germinate in the bag at these temperatures when they are ready to do so towards the end of the pretreatment period, if they do, just remove them from the bag and carefully plant them up.
For larger quantities it is easiest to sow the seeds in a well prepared seedbed once the cold pretreatment has finished and wait for the seeds to germinate. Seeds that are ready to germinate will begin to split, if they have not the pretreatment is not yet complete or has been ineffective due to incorrect temperatures or incorrect moisture content of the pretreatment medium and the pre treatment process should be started again.
Do not expose newly sown seeds to high temperatures (above 25 Celsius) otherwise a secondary dormancy may be induced and the seeds will not germinate until they have been pretreated again. Germinated seeds can be planted in deep pots or plug trays in a good quality compost. Keep the seedlings well watered and weed free.
Growth in the first year is usually between 15 and 40 cm and usually trouble free. Growth accelerates in the second and subsequent years. Allow them to grow for 1 or 2 years before planting them in a permanent position.
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