Manual of good practices on acorn direct seed sowing for reforestation projects
This manual presents a methodology to help Mediterranean restoration projects to find solutions to make possible the direct seeding of acorns with guarantees and success. We also provide our experience
Things that we did in August
Other things we have done during August and September is to prepare all the documentation required to apply for a couple of grants.
One is to increase all our actions with the aim of caring for human health and the health of the land,
What’s cooking in the Seedlab (literal)
We are adjusting one of the protocols for measuring the dry weight of the seeds. For this we use a modified oven to achieve a constant temperature of 103º for 17h, so that the humidity goes away, and so we can weigh the difference.
This is very important for priming and storage.
The difficulty comes from the accuracy,
Forecasting the acorn harvest
As we have explained in previous publications, the acorns have passed the montanera, and at the end of August the acorns start to grow.
If, by this time, they have hardly emerged from the dome as in the first picture, these fruits have little chance of thriving,
Wild olive germination chart
In this graph you can see the results of the tests we described in the previous post on wild olive seed germination. All of them have been handled in a range of temperatures around 13º and different cuts have been made in the stone.
With these results we hope to continue improving the technique to have more varieties ready to germinate in our reforestations.
Study of wild olive tree germination
The germination of the wild olive tree is quite complex, it has taken us several years to find the key, because if the seed is harvested when ripe (at the same time as the traditional olive harvest) it does not work. When it is ripe but somewhat green, it is viable.
This year we have been able to carry out germination tests to find out how to develop an effective method.
La Montanera
In the past, “the montanera” was observed in mid-August, that is, to see how full the holm oaks were of acorns in order to organise the breeding and fattening of the livestock.
At Semillistas, we do the same thing to find out if we will have a sufficient harvest for reforestation.
We are a land stewardship organisation
When we were at the Enraizarte Festival (Peñascosa) we went to a talk about Land Stewardship, where the integral cooperative Estraperlo talked about their project ‘Toma Tierra’ in the Sierra del Segura (Albacete).
It was really inspiring, so we have registered in the list of Land Stewardship associations,
Priming of seeds with stronger latencies
There is also extensive long-term work to be done to obtain methodologies for priming seeds with stronger dormancy, or even requiring a year of cold and heat, such as hawthorn and wild rose.
This way we could have varieties ready for germination in a couple of weeks instead of a year!
Improving pre-germinative treatments experiment
We have designed an experiment to improve pre-germinative treatments.
Usually the acorns are soaked for a couple of days, or cold stratification is done, but this must be done with sand, mixing the acorns in 3 times their volume in humid substrate at 4 degrees in refrigerators. In this way space is a problem.