Growing Trees from Groceries

I am such a dork about science. I read in The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities that if you freeze peach seeds, it tricks them into thinking winter has come and you can get them to sprout.

So we took a whole bunch of peach seeds and cherry seeds from organic fruits we gobbled up, threw them in a freezer bag and froze them for a few days.

Freezer Seeds

 Then we planted three each in 3 gallon pots that we had.

Not Dirt- Future Trees

We still had tons more seeds so we threw them in with the potted tomato plants. I figure this way we know they will be watered when we water our tomatos. Then if they do sprout - we won't have to transplant them into bigger pots for awhile.

Not just tomatoes- also future fruit trees. I hope.

I have no idea if any of this will work. But we dug this peach tree out of my mother-in-laws compost pile last year and its doing great.

Compost Peach Tree

Not all fruit seeds will grow into proper adult trees with edible fruit but peach trees and cherry trees seem to be a good choice to try. Toby Hemingway, Author of Gaia's Garden, Second Edition: A Guide To Home-Scale Permaculture responded to a question about growing fruit from seeds thusly: "Most stone fruits grow more or less true from seed, unlike apples and pears. They may reach a different height than the parent tree, since they aren't grafted to a controlled rootstock. Seedlings can grow very vigorously and self-select for your local conditions, so they have their advantages too."

Basically he is saying that the fruit from your seed grown tree will be edible but will grow really tall. I can work with that. Why don't you throw some stone seeds into your freezer and try growing grocery trees with us? Science experiment trees! I will post some follow ups as they (hopefully) grow.