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Download the Growing Agroforestry Seedlings Chapter
The Growing Agroforestry Seedlings chapter of the Facilitators Manual provides the detailed instructions (and support materials) you need to implement the Seedling Propagation activities. Download the chapter here.
Summary
Goal Farmers will use appropriate nursery techniques to propagate seedlings for planting in their Forest Gardens. Learning Objectives- Understand benefits of tree nurseries.
- Learn best practices for preparing a tree nursery site and constructing nursery beds.
- Learn how to pretreat commonly used tree seeds.
- Learn sowing methods for seed species supplied.
- Learn tree nursery management best practices.
- Chapter 4: Seeds
- Chapter 5: Seedling Propagation
- Chapter 13: Permagardening (Convenient Spacing Tools section)
- Identify a nursery site (on the lead farmer’s or a participant farmer’s land) where the training will take place and inspect the site to make sure it meets the general nursery site requirements.
- Decide which agroforestry tree seeds to provide, based on Forest Garden designs and applicability for the project area.
- Depending on the tree species that participants will grow, and resources available (e.g. will they have tree sacks?), determine which tree nursery techniques (bareroot bedding, tree sacks, and/or vegetative propagation) and seed pretreatment techniques (e.g. soak, scarify and soak, boil and soak, etc.) need to be covered with the group.
- Prepare 100-150 seeds for planting, based on the selected species’ pretreatment requirement.
- Prepare cuttings, if necessary.
- 3-4 weeks before the workshop, ask the lead farmer to sow several seeds in 5 tree sacks and care for them.
- ½ wheelbarrow of wood ash
- ½ wheelbarrow of charcoal ash
- 4 x 1.5 meter wire mesh for sifting soil
- 3 wheelbarrows of sand
- 1 wheelbarrow of topsoil
- 1 wheelbarrow of manure (If topsoil is sandy, bring two wheelbarrows of manure)
- 15 tree sacks per participant (5 for the activity, 10 for the assignment)
- 5 spade shovels
- 3 watering cans
- 1 wheelbarrow of Azadiractha indica (neem) or Eucalyptus sp. leaves, where available
- 100-150 hard-shelled tree seeds (e.g. Leucaena leucocephala, Acacia nilotica)
- nail clippers (1 set for each participant and 1 set for each facilitator)
- 100-150 Pretreated seeds
- 5 tree sacks with several germinated trees (~10-15 cm tall and 8cm in diameter)
- 50 liters of water
- 1 cup
- String
- 3 containers of soil for opener activity: one sand, one clay and one loam. Add water to the soil so it is moist for the demonstration.
- Materials for building shading structures for nursery beds: corner poles, cross-poles, and shading material (palm fronds or grasses) – (see Activity 1)
- Types of Soils
- Nursery Construction
- Nursery Species Chart
Agenda
Opener: Name That Soil (30 mins)- Do a simple soil test
- Improving soils through mixing types and amending
- Form small groups
- Determine where to establish the nursery
- Establish nursery beds appropriate to the seeds selected
- Why pretreat seeds
- Compare treated and non-treated seeds
- Demonstrate scarify and soak method
- Practice scarify and soak
- Farmer demonstrates how to sow
- Farmers practice sowing
- Discuss the importance of raising healthy seedlings
- Demonstrate proper watering techniques
- Demonstrate proper weeding techniques
- Demonstrate proper thinning techniques
- Pruning green wall seedlings
- Hardening off
- Debrief workshop activities
- Identify your nursery site
- Prepare beds (bare root and sacks) and build your shade structures over them
- Sack and seed distribution
- Follow-up
What you need to know
Whether you intend to sit the FG Pro certification exam, or lead Seedling Propagation module extension activities, you must be able to answer the following questions to succeed.Seeds: quality, collection, extraction & storage
Seed quality
- Why is seed quality important?
- How can you tell if a seed is likely to be good?
- What are characteristics of parent trees that are good for seed?
- How can you increase genetic diversity in your stored seeds? Should you harvest seed from fruits that come from the same tree? Should they be from trees that are near each other? Why or why not?
- What are desired parent characteristics for seeds of different products?
- Why do you use local varieties of fruit for seed?
Seed Collection
Seed Extraction & Drying
Seed Storage
Soil types, amendments, compost & mulch
Soil Type
- Why is soil quality important?
- What are the different types of soil?
- What are the drawbacks of clay for nursing trees?
- What are the drawbacks of sand for nursing trees?
- Why is loamy soil best for nursing trees? What is the fourth important medium for healthy soils? What is humus and where does it come from?
Simple Soil Test
Soil Amendments and their Benefits
Building your nursery, planting seeds, and seedling care
Selecting the Nursery Site
Tools, Nursery Bed Size and Working Space, and Building a Shade Structure
- Depending on the nursery method – how many seedlings can you raise per square meter of space?
- In addition to nursery beds, what all should you incorporate in your nursery layout?
- What is a good width for a nursery bed? What is the ideal length of a nursery bed? Why do you need to leave space between nursery rows, how much?
- What tools do you need to establish your nursery?
- How do you build a shade structure?
Double Digging & Bareroot Beds
- What are the pros and cons of bareroot seedlings? What special precautions do you take when planting bareroots? Why?
- What is double digging? How do you perform double digging for tree nurseries? When double digging – how do you mix or amend the soil to obtain the best growing substrate?
- When double digging – how should you position the height of the bed depending on the average rainfall in the area?
Tree Sacks
Seed pretreatment methods
- Why would you want to pretreat seeds versus just sowing them without pre-treating them? What are two reasons to treat seeds before sowing? What does pretreating the seed actually do to the seed? Do you notice any difference between pretreated and untreated seeds? Do all seeds need to be pretreated before sowing? What are different seed pre-treatment methods?
- How do you cut and how deep for the scarify and soak method? What can you use to make the cut? Where do you want to avoid cutting the seeds for the scarify and soak method?
Sowing Seeds
- How can you remove most weeds before planting your nursery?
- How many seeds do you sow in each sack? When determining how many seeds to plant, how can you protect against loss of seedlings?
- What method do you use to create planting holes in tree sacks? How deep should these holes be?
- Why is it important to gently tamp down the soil after covering the seeds?
- For both tree sacks and bareroot beds – how much water do the seeds need right after planting?
- When planting seeds in bareroot beds, how far apart and how deep should you make the planting trenches? For Bareroot beds – what is the spacing of the seeds within the trenches? What should you cover bareroot beds with after planting seeds? Why?
Caring for Seedlings in the Nursery
Watering
- How much water should you use to water your seedlings?
- If a watering can is available, what is proper watering technique? What other materials can you use instead of a watering can?
- What times of day should you water your nursery? If it rains and the soil is still very wet at watering time, should you still water your nursery?
- How do you know if you’re watering too much? What should you do? How do you know if you’re not watering enough? What should you do?
Weeding
Thinning
- What do you do when more than one seedling germinates in a sack?
- Why do you thin seedlings?
- Should you thin in the sun or in the shade?
- How tall should seedlings be when thinned?
- How many seedlings should remain in tree sacks after thinning?
- How do you decide which seedlings to thin out, and which to replant?
- When thinning seedlings – what method do you use to extract the seedling?
- After transplanting, why should disturbed soil be repacked?
- Should replanted seedlings be watered? When?
- How do you determine which bareroot seedlings to thin? Where do you replant these seedlings?
Hardening Off