Oak Summit Nursery

Oak Summit Nursery Mail order nursery growing cold hardy fruit trees, berry bushes and native plants with a full seed shop for the Canadian prairies. Located in Brandon Manitoba
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a first round of softwood, a little flaccid. its hot, and the cuttings are about a week early. turgidity can pick up u...
06/09/2026

a first round of softwood, a little flaccid. its hot, and the cuttings are about a week early. turgidity can pick up under mist, it keeps your lettuce crisp in the grocery store. some cool ones in here, if they work - eurasia, toka, black ice, kyrgyz, bogataya. if you aren't familiar with these names, they're hybrid plums and I have a few russian pears in the mix, experimental - center stage is toka - we know that one will root if I can tune all the variables just right. black ice - it's a besseyi hybrid, why isn't it on the list of modern cherry plums?

Theissen saskatoon seedlings. a large fruiting cultivar, and a larger tree than the wild ones. while the seedlings are...
06/08/2026

Theissen saskatoon seedlings. a large fruiting cultivar, and a larger tree than the wild ones. while the seedlings aren't exactly the same as the cultivar, they should be very similar. saskatoon/serviceberry is notoriously difficult to propagate clonally, you basically need to use tissue culture, or some crazy etiolation - like grow it in a pot in the dark for a few weeks then take cuttings. seedlings are easier.

wolf willow seedlings, a native shrub with silver blue leaves. Elaeagnus commutata
06/08/2026

wolf willow seedlings, a native shrub with silver blue leaves. Elaeagnus commutata

potting some elderberry, hardwood set on heat mats in the root cellar, so damp and even temps. this set rooted in 2 week...
06/08/2026

potting some elderberry, hardwood set on heat mats in the root cellar, so damp and even temps. this set rooted in 2 weeks, the rest are about 50/50 so maybe another week. rooting grapes in the same way this year, pots of well draining mix, 8000ppm ima talc and bottom heat. after potting, the elderberry are a bit droopy so set them under timed mist for a while. everyone starts hardwood cuttings a bit different, the easy method is stick in the ground. well this works only if you have the right climate and local environment, and soil. could I just set them in pots outside, maybe but even in a cool cellar they're sending up top growth without roots, so it would have to be very early in the year. elderberry is very borderline in zone 3, still looking for the most cold hardy ones.

oyster mushrooms are easy to identify. here growing on an aspen after some rain and hot weather. sure fills a frying pa...
06/08/2026

oyster mushrooms are easy to identify. here growing on an aspen after some rain and hot weather. sure fills a frying pan.

a few z grafts, you can see how on the larger rootstock it helps heal over the cut faster than a graft just off to one s...
06/08/2026

a few z grafts, you can see how on the larger rootstock it helps heal over the cut faster than a graft just off to one size. the large one is an unnamed plug directly onto chokecherry, and the small ones are american wild plum interstems between chokecherry and black ice plum - a sandcherry hybrid I'm trying to root this summer, basically it's a cherry plum - and the other has alenja on top, which survived -40 so another interesting imported plum to grow,

nannyberry seedlings. tricky to grow because of the deep dormancy. these germinated after a short warm strat in early w...
06/07/2026

nannyberry seedlings. tricky to grow because of the deep dormancy. these germinated after a short warm strat in early winter, and they seem to like to hold and stay dormant at this stage, I kept them in the fridge four months then planted in the greenhouse.

poblano peppers, an early crop under grow lights
06/07/2026

poblano peppers, an early crop under grow lights

clove currant, golden currant - there are two species of these, one has black fruit, the other has variable colors somet...
06/07/2026

clove currant, golden currant - there are two species of these, one has black fruit, the other has variable colors sometimes black but also red and yellow, orange. this accession is from the u of sask, only called missouri currant, and I have both R. aureum and R. odoratum growing here, this one flowers differently, so it's interesting. maybe we'll get some fruit this year. there is variation in these species, crandall comes to mind with larger fruit, but there als also european cultivars with different shapes and colors.

last year I was lucky enough to receive a few seeds from the usda seed bank. these ones, Ribes lacustre didn't germinate...
06/07/2026

last year I was lucky enough to receive a few seeds from the usda seed bank. these ones, Ribes lacustre didn't germinate but just in case I kept them watered and set the pots outside for the winter. There were something like 5 seeds the size of a grain of sand in each pot, some of them old like ten or more years - seeds of a specific native currant I want to grow in our collection of native plants. here one of each is growing, about fifteen months from when they started. this method should be useful for seeds with a deep dormancy, keep them in some pots in the shade watered just as long as it takes, the manual method is the dr deno system 70/40F oscillations for 3 months in and out of a fridge in a bag with damp medium. about the Ribes - I'll grow each plant as an accession - which just mean a unique plant which may have some distinct genetics, some novel trait - the usda recorded exactly where they were collected, maybe one will grow better here or be easier to propagate.

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Brandon, MB
R7A5Y2

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+18005449266

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