Today I began cold-stratification of the Golden Currant Ribes aureum. From what I've read, Golden Currant seed can require 60 days or more of cold-stratification to stimulate sprouting. These seeds will join the seeds of Netleaf Hackberry Celtis reticulata and Canyon Grape Vitis arizonica, which began their cold-stratification a few weeks ago. I'm never sure if I'll get any to sprout, but I've had reasonable success with other species, so it's worth a try.
While I don't need many of the Netleaf Hackberry seeds to germinate, nor the Canyon Grape for that matter, I really hope that I get a good lot with the Golden Currant. Flowers and fragrance are all well and good, but I'm hoping for fruit as well!
But for now, as far as Ribes aureum is concerned, the waiting game begins.
Thursday, January 23, 2014
A place to begin.
As I write this, the ground outside is covered with last night's two inches of snow, though along the northern fenceline the snow has melted into the ground.
I say this is a place to begin, but really this story began last spring, perhaps even earlier. Just as a forest grows and changes as one group of species succeeds another, so has our back yard. When we bought our house, the only trees on the property were a diseased clump of Quaking Aspen and a couple volunteer Siberian Elm. Otherwise, the soil was better than what I had been used to in Fort Collins, probably due to the local floodplain soil structure. The back yard had, apparently, been landscaped at some point in the past - I found the remains of potting soil and root balls when I began working the soil in earnest - but, aside from some white bearded iris clumps, it was a weed lot. It's come a long way.
The posts themselves will be few and short, until the rest of the blog's components are fleshed out. But I will try to post things as they come up.
I say this is a place to begin, but really this story began last spring, perhaps even earlier. Just as a forest grows and changes as one group of species succeeds another, so has our back yard. When we bought our house, the only trees on the property were a diseased clump of Quaking Aspen and a couple volunteer Siberian Elm. Otherwise, the soil was better than what I had been used to in Fort Collins, probably due to the local floodplain soil structure. The back yard had, apparently, been landscaped at some point in the past - I found the remains of potting soil and root balls when I began working the soil in earnest - but, aside from some white bearded iris clumps, it was a weed lot. It's come a long way.
The posts themselves will be few and short, until the rest of the blog's components are fleshed out. But I will try to post things as they come up.
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