Q.propagating pine trees and/or bittersweet vine
I’ve read many articles here and around the web on how to propagate evergreens and bittersweet (my search topics). There are complicated directions that seem fraught with failure – not chilled enough or long enough, not fertile, not keep moist and not too moist in boxes. This is not a sarcastic comment. It’s a serious question about an alternate easy method. My various pines and spruce and cedar manage to throw out sports every years. Under my red pine which fell last week in a storm, there are replacement pines and cedar 3 to 7 feet tall. My blue spruces have seven foot spruce growing into the edges of the branches of the trees. I own a field which was alfalfa and we let it go. We did plant 4-5 rudbeckia and liatris. There are thousands of purple coneflowers and varied daisy forms happily choking each other. But importantly, we found a grove of 20 foot pine trees and 25 spruce out their hiding among sugar maples – a thick forest. We never planted any of them! They were a shock. I didn’t know that pine trees could grow acres away from our pines. I know how it happened – it was simply a shock. Thank you goldfinches and many other friends. Can’t we just take our pine cones (like our bittersweet) and spread them around? Maybe pressed slightly into the surface? They’ll chill themselves and keep themselves moist under feet of snow for months. It seems simple – so simple I had to rely on trees to do it – I didn’t know how. Can’t instructions give the alternative instructions: plant them yourself? It’s so easy I never thought of it and it just happened. Just shake your pine cones and release the seeds onto the ground. To keep from birds I guess I can spread needles on top of them. Thanks for reading this overlong simple comment. Or question.
Peter
These articles have information on seed propagation of the seeds.
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/trees/pine/how-to-grow-a-pine-tree-from-seed.htm
https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/ornamental/vines/bittersweet/growing-bittersweet-vines.htm
https://plants.usda.gov/plantguide/pdf/pg_cesc.pdf
