fieldmesh
Nursery: baby trees, transplants and other starts#
2026-10-08. A plan, saved for later — nothing here is built yet. The fourth companion to plant-conditions.md. A nursery sells the plants on the other lists young: bare-root and container tree seedlings for forestry and erosion work, grafted fruit trees, live stakes, vegetable and flower transplants, crowns, bulbs, sod and seed. nursery-list.csv has 22 item types, each with examples from the plant list, how it is propagated, how it is sold, its season, and what to watch.
What is different about growing starts#
| dimension | the nursery side | the site side |
|---|---|---|
| Propagation | seed, cuttings (hardwood, softwood), grafting and budding, layering, division, tissue culture — USDA PLANTS records which methods work per species | skills, mist bench, greenhouse |
| Dormancy | cold stratification or scarification before seed will germinate — a USDA PLANTS field, and in detail per woody species in the Woody Plant Seed Manual | a cooler, or sowing in autumn to let winter do it |
| Light | seedlings and transplants are judged by daily light; some flower only at certain day lengths | greenhouse or shade house; the sunlight dimension, under cover |
| Heat and cold | root zones in black containers overheat in summer and freeze in winter, sooner than ground-planted roots | container placement, shade cloth, overwintering |
| Water | small containers need water daily and lose nutrients in the runoff | reliable water; capture of runoff — a sensor and fertilizer question fieldmesh already covers |
| Time to saleable | weeks for transplants, one or two years for bare-root seedlings, more for grafted and container trees | cash flow |
| Season | bare-root stock is lifted and planted dormant; transplants follow spring and autumn | the climate's calendar |
The rules#
Nursery stock moves plants between farms, and with them pests and disease, so it is regulated in ways the rest of a farm is not:
- A nursery licence and inspection from the state department of agriculture, in most states; phytosanitary certificates to ship across state lines or abroad; quarantines on particular hosts (citrus, for citrus greening, is the familiar one).
- Certified clean stock. Seed potatoes, strawberry plants, citrus budwood, grape and fruit-tree material come through certification programs — USDA's National Clean Plant Network for fruit trees, grapes and berries — because saved stock accumulates viruses.
- Patents and plant variety protection. Many fruit varieties, rootstocks, berries and seed varieties are patented or PVP-protected, and some are trademarked "club" varieties; propagating them without a licence is infringement, even from a plant you own.
- Seed laws for selling seed: labelling, germination testing.
Sources#
| source | gives | licence |
|---|---|---|
| USDA PLANTS | propagation methods, cold stratification, seedling vigour, seeds per pound, commercial availability, nursery-stock product | CC0 |
| USDA FS Woody Plant Seed Manual (Agriculture Handbook 727) | seed collection, storage, dormancy and germination for woody species | US government work |
| USDA FS Nursery Manual for Native Plants (Agriculture Handbook 730) | how to run a native-plant nursery | US government work |
| USDA GRIN | germplasm and accepted names | US government work |
| National Clean Plant Network; state certification programs | clean stock | — |
| USPTO plant patents; USDA PVP Office | what may not be propagated without a licence | public records |
Build order#
- Pull the propagation fields from USDA PLANTS with the rest of the plant characteristics.
- A propagation calendar for a farm: when to sow, stratify, take cuttings, graft, lift.
- A check for protected varieties before anything is propagated for sale. Built 2026-10-09 for Plant Variety Protection: protected_varieties.py reads the PVP Office's monthly Application Status Report (every application since 1970: 18,327 rows, 8,955 certificates issued, 983 pending) and says whether a variety is protected, provisionally protected (pending: the Act protects from the date of application), or not under PVP. Kizuri apple: protected to 2047. Plant patents are not checked — fruit trees, berries and plants propagated from cuttings are usually patented rather than certificated (Honeycrisp was, until 2008), and the patent office serves plant patents as scanned images — so "not found" is never "free to propagate", and the tool says so.