How long can I save a peach/plum/cherry pit?

I have an abundance of peach/apricot/cherry and plum seeds now, with intentions of planting them this fall, still some months away...--how long will they last? How should be kept until then?  I was just thinking some lightly damp soil or sand. Any help most appreciated. Closed bag or open?

I was about to ask this exact question! I also have stone fruit seeds I'm collecting that I want to plant by fall. I was wondering if it would be easier to just plant them all now, and let them spend the summer in the ground. It doesn't rain in the summer here so it might not even germinate until fall.

I don't know the answer to that, but if we look at what happens in nature, the unpicked fruits fall to the ground or are transported by animals, and the seed probably germinates or not next spring.  

Michael Littlejohn wrote:
I have an abundance of peach/apricot/cherry and plum seeds now, with intentions of planting them this fall, still some months away...--how long will they last? How should be kept until then?  I was just thinking some lightly damp soil or sand. Any help most appreciated. Closed bag or open?

Stonefruit seeds cannot be dried out completely. If the seed on the inside dries out, it's dead, it won't sprout if you rehydrate it. They shouldn't be stored in damp soil or sand either - this could potentially cause them to germinate before you want them to. At room temperature, this will cause mold.

Start by removing all of the fruit from the pits. The easiest way to do this is to put them in a bowl with some crushed rocks, the type used for some roads and driveways. Continue squeezing the pits/rocks in your hands and between your fingers, periodically rinsing the extra fruit out. When all fruit is removed, pick out the pits and lightly dry them. When they appear dry on the outside, they're done drying, any attempt to continue drying them will dry out the living seed inside and kill it.

You can store them in the fridge or the freezer. A cabinet is not recommended, as they could potentially start molding.

When you're ready to germinate, set a pair of vice grip pliars to just smaller than the size of the shell and squeeze it while wearing goggles for safety. This will crack open the shell without crushing the seed inside. Place the seed into moist soil in the fridge and wait 3 months. I can state from experience that if you follow these instructions, your seeds will all begin sprouting a taproot in almost exactly 3 months. Other germination methods are less reliable and harder to predict exactly when the seed will actually sprout, maybe never. This method gives you all your seeds germinated exactly when you want them germinated.

Let the taproot grow about 1 to 2 inches before removing from the fridge and planting it in a container to grow. The seed should be planted above the soil, with only the taproot making soil contact, to prevent mold. If you plant it with the seed itself touching soil, it will likely die from mold. Seeds that don't have a 1 to 2 inch taproot are highly vulnerable to mold and should be kept refrigerated until germination is complete. Refrigeration will allow the seedling to grow but not the mold.

After a 1 to 2 inch taproot has grown place it upright under a light source. You do not need to wait for the cotyledons to separate, light exposure at this stage will cause the seedling to start growing quickly.  Grow lights are the preferred method to start stonefruit seedlings because you avoid mice, insects, etc. If planting outdoors you absolutely must protect them from birds, roaches, rodents, pretty much any hungry critter will devour a stonefruit seedling. Once the cotyledons have fallen off, they have far fewer pests, mostly just deer. If you start them under grow lights then move outside, place them in shade, moving from grow lights to sunlight very quickly will sunburn the leaves and shock the plant. Then gradually let the saplings have a little more sun each day until they are out in full sunlight all day long.

My response isn't really in relation to how long the unplanted seeds will keep, but rather how long it takes them to germinate.  Four seasons ago we were given a box of peaches that were really ripe.  I sliced some for the freezer and made a sauce out of the rest. The skins and pits were added to one of my raised beds which wasn't planted that year. The following year a handful of seeds sprouted and were eaten by deer within a few weeks.  Last year nine more sprouted but the dog broke one off.  Imagine my surprise this year when I see yet another seedling popping up in the same bed.  

Thanks Nate thats just what I needed...M

Nathan Watson wrote:
Stonefruit seeds cannot be dried out completely. If the seed on the inside dries out, it's dead, it won't sprout if you rehydrate it.

This is not what I've seen based on my own experience, I've planted dried, shelled sweet apricot kernels from bags you buy to eat just like sweet almonds and they all sprout just fine and these are about as dry as they can get! I've also planted months old dried out peach/nectarine/apricot/plum seeds and those were also fine. Stonefruit seeds might be more sturdy than you think. It seems like you might not actually have to stratify them either if you crack the pit open and extract the kernel/seed and peel them and soak them in cold water for 24 hours because both myself and others seem to be able to make them readily sprout this way.

I've done it exactly like the guy in this video and it works every single time with both apricots/dried, shelled sweet apricot kernels/peaches/nectarines/European & Japanese plums, pretty much 100% of them end up sprouting already after a good 24+ hour soak:  

Even after they sprout from the 24 hour cold water soak and peeling they do take weeks to fully emerge as small seedlings from the soil when planted though, plums especially grow/emerge very slowly. The guy in that video also writes in the comments that this works with apple and avocado seeds too. I've yet to try that but I believe him since stonefruits and apples, pears etc are from the same rose family and are relatively speaking fairly closely related and I'm going to try this with pear seeds next. This also works on English walnuts I've found, because after a long soak and 12 days in the fridge they had already sprouted when I cracked them open in the pointy end and are now coming out of the soil as small seedling trees after less than a month after I picked them, which makes me think they don't even need to be stratified as long as you crack the pointy end with the germ/sprout open and letting it be exposed to water. Actually I think this works with a lot of seeds as long as you are able to peel every coating off the actually inside seed/germ without damaging it. Anyhow to be fully on-topic again I think you can do this with any stonefruit seed even if they've dried out by a lot.

I have grown pie cherries on purpose for years and sweet cherries from a tree that was in the yard when we bought the house.  They both produce numerous small trees. I have grafted them and they grew up and produced.  We also have been growing plums and had the same result.  I get fewer trees when I actually save them and put them out the next spring, so now I just throw the pits out into the yard to see what I get.

John S
PDX OR

I just bury the pits whenever I get around to it.  Usually it's within a few weeks.  I got half a dozen sprouting in spring this year, and I had planted the last few pits the year before, so clearly some of them are willing to stay dormat for longer than one winter.

I'm liking the STUN (sheer, total, utter neglect) method of planting fruit trees: when I eat something yummy, I go put the seeds somewhere in my garden where I wouldn't mind having a tree.  Then I either get a tree there or not.  Seems like a reasonable idea to me!

For me, it's a matter of germination rate.

Fresh has a germination rate of 50-90%  after 6 months, it closer to 10% germination rate

Michael Littlejohn wrote:
I have an abundance of peach/apricot/cherry and plum seeds now, with intentions of planting them this fall, still some months away...--how long will they last? How should be kept until then?  I was just thinking some lightly damp soil or sand. Any help most appreciated. Closed bag or open?

How did these peach seeds do? Just found some buried, most likely from the summer, under leaves in my south-facing front yard and thinking about giving it a go with planting them.