As we talk you before in How to start your own self-sufficient food supply, we are doing talks on the new things we are trying here on the farm. We are working on adding to our self-sufficient food supply. So today we will be talking about how to grow your own almond tree from seed. The almond tree saga has taken some time, as trees are not fast-growing and have taken some special tricks to get them to grow. But here is the almond tree saga.

This may come as new info to some of you but YES, you can grow your own Almond trees from seed. Best of all, you can grow your own almond trees from the raw almonds that you buy at the store.

When researching how to grow almond trees, we found that the seeds need to go through several months of cold before they will sprout. Almonds like dry soil and hot weather. They will tolerate mild winter but not cold. If you are in an area that is not like that, you may not do well with almonds. We are planning to keep our almond trees in large pots and move them in and out as weather demands. Most almond trees need a friend for pollination so try to grow 2 or more.

So we got some raw almonds from the grocery store. We were not sure you could use almonds that were meant to be eaten from the store but I guess you can.

We bought organic raw almonds. We saved out 12 almonds and then we ate the rest, we do love almonds.

We wrapped the chosen almonds in damp paper and put them into a Tupperware bin and put them in the back of the fridge. Yes, I am told not all plastic boxes are Tupperware bins but that is still what I call them.
We left the almonds in the fridge for several months. We were planning on a 2-month wait but other things kept getting in the way of starting the almond seeds so they actually staying in the fridge for several months.

To our surprise when we finally pulled the almonds out of the fridge, the paper was still damp. Ten out of the 12 almonds that we had put into the fridge, had sprouted. Two almonds had rotten and had to be thrown out. But imagine our happiness that 10 almonds had done as we wanted them to.

We carefully took the ten sprouts and put each one in a pot. We figured dirt, water, sun, and heat would do the rest.

We were kind of right and kind of wrong.

Of the Ten sprouts that we planted, 4 ended up growing and making cute little almond trees. Not sure why the others did not grow as they had already sprouted in the fridge. But again, this was a new experiment and we are learning as we go.

You can see the sprouting and growth of our little almonds.

Unfortunately at this point, we are not sure why but we lost 1 of our baby almonds. It just shriveled up and died off. That was very disappointing. One thing to note, almonds do not like to stay wet. They need to be watered and then allowed to mostly dry before watering again. If you over-water your almonds they will not make it.

Something, critter-wise, got into the greenhouse and broke off two of the babies. That was upsetting. So we made sure nothing else could disturb our babies.

We now have one tween almond, growing strong.

If you already have trees, it takes 180 to 240 days from nut to harvest. The hulls will dry and split. You can harvest and separate the nuts from the shells. It has been noted that freezing your almonds after harvest may be advised if you have pest issues. The freezing will kill any leftover pests.

Of course, do not freeze the nuts if you are planning to spout them.

It will take several more years before our almond tree will be big enough to actually put off almonds. This was step one in part one of our almond saga. Next time we will continue the almond saga with some of the things we made with almonds.

This seems like a small thing but as we have said before one step at a time. Growing our own almonds from seed is just one more step toward being more self-sufficient and adding to what we already do on the farm.

We hope you have enjoyed this talk on how to grow your own almond tree from seed. This may be a project you want to try for yourself. Remember nut trees will take some years to produce so the sooner you start the sooner you will see results.

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.