How to germinate ramp seeds
I made a mental note of
the location of the ramps patches this spring, planning to check them
for seeds in the autumn. Luckily, the patches are on my usual weekly
routes because I'd forgotten all about my good intentions when these
clusters of hard seeds (not berries as they appear) showed up atop
four-inch-high stalks.
I gathered a few dozen
to experiment with, then hit up the internet for more information. Most
people, it seems, use hit-or-miss wild germination, spreading the seeds
in their woods in late summer or early autumn. Using that method,
seedlings usually show up in six to eighteen months.
I decided to get more
scientific about it however. Looking through the literature, it appears
that ramp seeds don't require scarification (breaking through the seed
coat using manual methods or acids). Instead, the deal is that they
need four to ten weeks at room temperature to get the roots to emerge
followed by who-knows-how-long in the fridge to get the shoots to pop
out.
I made a sandwich out of
four layers of damp toilet paper between two saucers and put the seeds
on the counter to see how my own results match up to those found under
more sterile conditions in the lab. I'll keep you posted about
whether/how my ramps grow!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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I am interested to see how this turns out. I can never seem to find ramps here but would love to hunt some next spring. JenW.