How I get a near 100% win rate on honey locust

This is probably old news to some, but I just sprouted a bunch of honey locust, so I thought I would share the method I use.  I'm so near 100% rate that it isn't worth mentioning the losses.  And it's not because I'm some sort of genius or have a secret method, locusts are just very easy :)  This works just as well with black locust.

It's as simple as this.  Collect your seeds.  This is ridiculously easy with locust.  One pod can have 10-20 seeds in it, so you can harvest 100 in less than 5 minutes.  Next, set a pot of water on the stove and bring it to a boil.  As soon as it starts boiling, shut off the heat and dump your seeds in.  Wait 24-48 hours.  Most, if not all, of your seeds will be very swollen.  If you have any that are floating, you can throw those away.  If you have any that aren't swollen, you can repeat the process.  This is rarely necessary.  At this point, you have two choices.  You can put the swollen seeds between some wet paper towels and leave them that way until they sprout.  You have to keep the towels damp.  The other option is to plant them immediately.  In that case, keep the soil damp until the sprout.  That's all there is to it.  I attached pictures of some I started a couple weeks ago.

Wow! That one in the top right is really showing a LOT of growth and even produced a pepper!


If honey locust thorns are as nasty as they look in all the images I keep seeing online each time I get tempted, I think I've decided to stick with black locust for now at least. But if this method works the same for those then I'll definitely have to try it once I can collect some seeds!

Haven't been especially concerned about being able to grow locust, but always nice to have tips that make it even easier.

Thanks for sharing!

John Warren wrote:Wow! That one in the top right is really showing a LOT of growth and even produced a pepper!


If honey locust thorns are as nasty as they look in all the images I keep seeing online each time I get tempted, I think I've decided to stick with black locust for now at least. But if this method works the same for those then I'll definitely have to try it once I can collect some seeds!

Haven't been especially concerned about being able to grow locust, but always nice to have tips that make it even easier.

Thanks for sharing!

Hey John, that crazy big one is a new cross I developed.  Pepper trees are far more efficient than those plants people normally have...  

The honey locust I am growing are from seeds of thornless honey locust.  I've heard you can get throw backs that will have thorns, but I haven't had it happen yet and I've grown quite a few of them.  Most all the honey locust you will find growing in my area are the thornless ones.  The main street of the town nearest me has them down the median for a few miles.  

Thornless Honeylocust is very common here in the Mid-Atlantic. Around 50% or more of the wild trees are thornless at this point. So much easier to deal with.

Trace, I think in the past I had read about some seeds of thornless HL producing thorns, but without the statement that it wasn't very many and so I kind of wrote that off as a very useful option.

But, you've got me reading more about it and seeing that it is a dominant trait; so they've gotten it to where thorns don't show up often, but can't quite get rid of them entirely - sort of like how my wife and I "somehow" ended up with 2 blue-eyed kids when neither of us has blue eyes.

And now I'm getting more tempted to give these thornless honey locusts a shot...

Ezra Beaton wrote:Thornless Honeylocust is very common here in the Mid-Atlantic. Around 50% or more of the wild trees are thornless at this point. So much easier to deal with.

I wonder if someone planting some of the thornless variety in an area with a lot of wild honey locust and letting it cross pollinate with them would have a significant impact through the transfer of that dominant thornless trait. Then, even though that next generation would only have a 50% chance of passing on the thornless gene, there would be quite a few more of them out there "trying" to pass it on - and if they pollinated with each other, they'd have a chance of creating offspring with only the dominant gene to pass on.

Gradually, though the thornless genes would still be out there, I imagine the thornlessness would begin to take over. And the more people planting the thornless variety, the faster it would happen.