Starting a backyard nursery

This is the first post in what I hope to be a series of starting a backyard, DIY plant nursery to grow out native plants for the biannual giveaways.

Last year I was gifted a gigantic feed bag full of elderberry (Sambucus canadensis) cuttings to hand out at the spring giveaway. I wasn’t able to distribute them all so I dedicated a raised bed and an area around the raised pond to growing them out over the summer to give away that next fall.

The ones that made it (because this is Plant Growing and not everything survives) were given away at the fall seed swap to several excited folks.

It gave me the idea to start growing out more of the plant stock for the giveaways, whether that be rooted elderberry or willow cuttings, root divisions of maypop vines (Passiflora incarnata), or even starting black walnuts (Juglans nigra) from seeds.

I started small this year. I have a dozen elderberry starts to give away, and maybe five maypops. I’ll bring some other easily divided perennials as well;
The Clustered Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) from Neighbors 4 Native Plants is getting out of hand and the Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) are well established enough to a good pruning.

Everything was grown out in reused pots using materials provided by friends, neighbors and family. When the black walnuts start to drop I’ll be collecting them from roadsides and from the greenway paths.

I’d say it would also be a good idea to do some guerrilla seed collecting along the greenway, but Metro Parks’ aggressive brushhogging cleared a lot of the wild natives before they went to seed. Oh well, another lesson learned: if you see something along the greenway that needs protecting, move it before the city destroys it.