# 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](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](../data/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 1. Pull the propagation fields from USDA PLANTS with the rest of the plant characteristics. 2. A propagation calendar for a farm: when to sow, stratify, take cuttings, graft, lift. 3. A check for protected varieties before anything is propagated for sale. *Built 2026-10-09 for Plant Variety Protection:* [protected_varieties.py](../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.