Kentucky Coffee Tree Seedlings - June 2021

 Back at the end of April, I was sitting at one of the kid's softball practices at a local Downers Grove park when I found these huge seed pods sitting on the ground.  A quick search showed me they are from Kentucky Coffee Tree seed pods.  How neat.  I posted a few times last year about how I found a few of these in our yard (thanks to an Arborist) and learned how they are/were native trees in Illinois.  So, I grabbed a few of these seed pods and brought them home.  A few days later, I cracked them open and harvested the seeds.  Here, below, is a pod cracked in half:

And, here, below, is a look at how many seeds I was able to get out of the pods:

A look online told me that I could get these seeds to germinate if I soaked them overnight and yanked out any that floated.  I had a few that floated, but most of them stayed at the bottom.   In the photo below, you can see Soaked at end of April:

I took those seeds that didn't float and planted them in a soil mix on the first of May in little 4" nursery pots.  Two per pot.  And saw some good germination by Mid May below:

And here's (below) what they look like by June 7th - where I'm seeing multiple tree seedlings in many of the containers.  By my rough count, I'm seeing seven or eight Kentucky Coffee Tree seedlings in the containers:

I'm going to have to go back online and poke around at what to do next:   do I plant them in the ground?  Leave them in these small containers all Summer?