Honey locusts are an extremely useful tree. They’re fast growing, possibly nitrogen fixing, and their wood is rot-resistant. The wood that you don’t use for fence post burns extremely hot in your wood stove. Their leaves can be used as food for grazing animals, too! It’s said that George Washington used honey locust trees planted 6 inches apart as a living fence. For all of these reasons, it makes sense to know the best strategy for honey locust germination.
We’re using them as a proof of concept for air-prune beds. These beds are an integral part of our strategy in transforming a hay field into a hazelnut orchard. Since we’re going through the trouble of planting them, we figured we’d do an experiment. We learned a little something, and wanted to share that information with you! 😁
We split our seeds (collected from the backyard after the pods had spent the winter under a snowy blanket) into two groups. We soaked one group in water for about 24 hours, and poured boiling water over the other group, which then cooled over a similar time period.
To my amazement, not only did the “boiled” group do better, it may have been 100% better, as we still haven’t had a seedling from the “soaked” group! (maybe that one in the middle, but I’m not confident about that at all)
I felt that this experiment confidently showed the incredible superiority of the boiling method for optimal honey locust germination. That’s not all the experiments we did though. Next post will be a similar experiment with Siberian Pea Shrub, but with way different results!
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