Planting Seeds
From late fall and into early winter I work on tucking the over-wintering seedlings under a layer of wood chip mulch as the soil freezes to protect them from cycles of freezing and thawing and from drying winds if the snow cover isn't consistent. There are more seedlings going under the mulch this fall than any previous year so I hope to have a lot of plants ready to go by the May long weekend next year.
I'll winter sow the majority of the seeds that I gather and purchase between now and the end of December and leave them outdoors to germinate in the spring.
If you are planning for spring, you might find the information in some of my videos and the search and filter tools in the plant store helpful in your native plant journey.
Starting in the new year I'll be working on adding a great deal more information about the nursery itself to this website. Over the last eight years I’ve been slowly problem-solving various aspects of local native plant propagation and sales and have worked to develop a sustainable, low barrier to entry, living wage business model for growing and locally offering native plant species. This business model has been developed with the intention of sharing the lessons with anyone interested in starting their own small-scale native plant nursery in any community with sufficient market for native plant seedlings and I’ll be working on compiling what I’ve learned into an interactive website and a PDF manual over this winter. I'll add the link here once I have the first batch of info ready to go.
My other big project this winter will be my search for someone to take over the native plant nursery. My spouse plans to retire in the spring of 2028 and I plan to step away from my current work at the same time. I would like to pass the nursery into Indigenous hands, so my search is currently only open to members of Indigenous communities with long-term relationship with the ecosystems on this part of Turtle Island. You can find more info about that here and I invite you to share the page with anyone that you think might be interested.