Our Bare Root Trees Orders are Closed for the Season
Thank you to all of our customers who ordered trees and bushes through the winter for spring delivery! From April through the end of the year we're busy growing the next year's trees and collecting new seeds to offer on our shop and grow in the nursery.
In April our greenhouse is filled with small potted trees and perennials, and in 2024 we're planning to double it's size. By June we move out those pots to make room for softwood propagation, and the greenhouse will be filled again with cuttings growing roots under intermittent mist. By September we'll start planting those out into nursery beds. With our short growing season many seedling trees will take two years to get up to size, and with some luck and continually improving our soil and beds with compost and manure from our horses - some are up to size in just one year.
We're planning to expand our nursery footprint by creating more no-till beds, market garden style in rows with pathways, and establishing a new orchard in our old hayfield across the road from a wetland. And our new root cellar built in 2023 was a success, and expand there are plans to add a new cold storage room in our wood shop.
And finally in 2024 the mission continues to collect and grow every cold hardy fruiting species and cultivar - everything that will grow on the Canadian Prairies. We're adding many new varieties of berry bushes, grapes, sea buckthorn, haskaps, and stone fruit. Some of these will be available next winter and if all goes well our 2025 catalog will be quite exciting.
A Small Nursery Startup on the Canadian Prairies
Oak Summit Nursery was founded in 2020 after years of interest in permaculture, grafting fruit trees and gardening. Gardening in our climate is tough, we only get a few months in the summer for vegetables and then you start over, but a fruit tree continues to grow and improve every year. After finally starting an orchard, which began to grow into a food forest, I soon made a goal to collect one of everything that can possibly grow here. Located in southern Manitoba, Canada in USDA zone 3 our nursery is nestled into an Aspen and Bur Oak forest on our 50 acre property. Growing trees takes some time and patience. What started in a few raised beds is about half an acre this year of beds full with tree seedlings and rooted cuttings. In our greenhouse we propagate many woody plant using softwood mist propagation, and in our beds we grow trees from locally collected seeds, hardwood cuttings, and by stooling/layering.
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Apples Grafted Onto Saskatoon
A group of apple grafts done in spring of 2022 onto wild Saskatoon tree near the nursery. This year we've been experimenting with both Apple and Pear graft compatibility with excellent results. The real test will be how well they surive for the first few winters and to see how they well produce fruit. Our native Saskatoon has been used in field studies as a dwarfing rootstock for pear and apple.
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Root Stocks
We grow our own seedling apple root stocks from locally collected apple seeds. Our largest Malus baccata (Siberian Crab Apple) trees are 20 years old and large healthy trees - proven fully cold hardy to our cold winters. Every year we collect the seeds and start a new crop of apple root stocks. After a year or two they're large enough to graft on the named cultivar of apple, and we then we grow the grafted trees for one final year in the nursery.
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Forest Path
One of the walking paths through the forest around our nursery. Mostly frequented by deer and our pet horses and donkey, this one is wide enough we can mow it through the summer. Many of the seeds we offer are collected along paths like this at the right time of year.
