Seed Orchards
Orchard is a bit grandiose. In 2016 I had two of my Meyer's Spruce bear cones, about a dozen each. That gave me 2000 seeds, of which I planted about a thousand. That production line depends on two trees ten feet apart, and while a few thousand seeds is sufficient for in-house production, it's limiting if you want to add a line of seeds later. In addition right now my Meyer's are about 6 feet tall. Picking cones is easy. Won't be so easy when they are 50 feet tall, not that I'm worrying about it this year. In addition having multiple trees gives you more genetic diversity. I figure that planting them in small batches a few years apart will be sufficient. I'm also trying 200 tatarian maple and 200 siberian crabapple.
This does not need to be done as a separate block, unless you are into serious production. Instead expand the demo gardens. This has the additional gift of showing off the same species at multiple stages of development, and can be used to model various landscaping ideas. (2017: No meyers cones this year.)
Seed gives you a product at Seedy Sunday, and for mail order. While it is unlikely that sales would be huge, this is yet another way to get your name out there.
At this point we have production for * Green Ash * Hawthorn * Dogwood * Sea Buckthorn * Chokecherry * Villosa Lilac * Siberian Crabapple * Dolgo Crabapple
Limited production (a few trees) * Meyer’s Spruce * Scots Pine
Lodgepole Pine in our front yard.
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