ALCS Does Our 21st Year of Nut and Fruit Tree Seed Planting
October 15, 2025
Another glorious summer and Fall, another harvest time, another miraculous effort by Mother Nature to re-supply her plants and trees with new seed. We regular folks can help Mother Nature, wildlife, and our native forests by gathering this bounty either casually or assertively, and planting whatever we get wherever it makes most sense for us to put it, wherever our footsteps take us outside.
At ALCS, in early August we begin collecting cores from various apple varieties, black walnuts, Chinese chestnuts, crab apples, and peach pits, and we either stage or firmly end our collecting when the freezers and refrigerators are filled with them, every free container is filled and beginning to ferment, and no one can stand it any more. We usually end up with about a hundred pounds of nuts, seeds, and cores to plant. We pick up and collect our specimens at every road bend in farm country, at every township park and county park, at every fruit harvest and canning operation.
The more seed and nut diversity in our annual collection, the better.
Commando seed and nut planting can happen anywhere you happen to be, though certain places are better than others. Any land slated for development is not a good investment of your time and effort. But the edges of utility rights-of-way, the edges of parks, fields, river banks, those forested areas between opposing highway lanes etc are all good places for a quick heel-dig in the dirt and a fast sweep of said dirt back over your apple core or nut seed. Foresters and property owners can very easily take a twenty minute walk in the fresh air, and plant a couple dozen seeds or fruits.
If you really want to see the fruits of your labor come to life, then some basic wire mesh made into a tube shape held by a very simple single wooden stake or sharpened tree limb should provide enough protection to help the seed take root. This early stage is 90% of the battle.
Most people like knowing that they are helping green the environment, helping wildlife and humans alike have access to natural food. Planting simple apple cores and various tree seeds and nuts can achieve that success.
“Just the other day I was walking in a wooded area I had not been in for years, and I found a Chinese chestnut sapling that I had planted as a nut a number of Falls ago. Thus far the little tree had survived deer browsing and drought, lantern flies, mile-a-minute and Asian bittersweet. Hopefully in twenty years it will be loaded down with hundreds of pounds of delicious chestnuts in late summer that are available to wild turkeys, bears, deer, and adventurous humans,” says ALCS president Josh First.
