Hardwood is the wood that has turned brown and hardened, while softwood is generally green or red, depending on the tree, and is malleable. In the spring, take softwood cuttings (rather than hardwood ones) using a clean pair of clippers. Not all maples root well from cuttings, but many do, so it’s worth a try. Add an hour each day until the plants can stay outside for a full eight hours.įind more tips on propagating from seed here. The next day, take them outside for two hours. With either method, once the seedlings emerge and have grown one set of true leaves, you can transplant them into their permanent spot as described below.īefore transplanting outdoors from indoors, be sure to harden the new seedlings off by putting them outside in a protected area for an hour. Place it in a window with bright, indirect sunlight for at least four hours a day, and keep the medium moist. Something with equal parts compost and coco coir is ideal. In the early spring, place the artificially cold stratified seeds four inches apart in a flat filled with a seed-starting medium. Check every few weeks to make sure the sand is still moist. Then, place it in the refrigerator for three months. Place the soaked seeds in a bag filled with moist sand.

Remove the hardware cloth and place the flat in a shaded area.įor those in Zones 8 and 9, you’ll have to do the stratification work artificially. In the spring, you’ll start to see tiny green sprouts emerging. This is a natural way to cold stratify the seeds. Keep the soil moist but not wet until germination. Now, place the flat outside in the cold in a partially shaded area for the entire winter. Fill a seeding flat with a seed-starting medium to three quarters of an inch from the top and place the seeds four inches apart.Ĭover with a quarter of an inch of soil and lay a piece of mesh screen or hardware cloth over the top. If you live in Zones 4 to 7, plant them in containers to start. Then, collect all the seeds that have dropped to the bottom of the container. To harvest the seeds, break the “wings” off the pods and place the seeds in a bowl of room temperature water for 24 hours. It’s best to harvest the seeds, test their viability, and then cold stratify them in seed trays. You can always plant the seeds directly in the ground after they fall from the tree, but this can be a bit hit or miss. Of course, you can pick the pods up from the ground, if you desire, but pods picked fresh from the tree seem to germinate best. Act fast, because once the pods start falling, the whole tree will drop its seeds within a matter of days. Once you see the seed pods starting to fall off the tree, it’s time to collect them.

Japanese vine maple