Regal Prince Acorns Collected, Tested and Ready for Cold Stratification - November 2023

For the past few months, I've been collecting acorns for a set of columnar oak trees and have been planning on trying to get them ready to plant up in the Spring.  Last Fall, I collected a wide variety of nuts, so when Spring came, I wasn't totally sure what was what.  This year, I know I only have one variety.

Here's the pile of Regal Prince Oak (columnar) acorns that I started with:

I put them in a bucket of water to test which were viable.    You can see all the floaters below:

I also had three Chestnuts that I tossed in, too.

After 12 hours, I fished all the floaters out - below are the number of non-viable acorns.  I'd say that's probably half (or more).

I went back after 24 hours and found a couple more floating.  I fished those out and tossed them for the critters to enjoy:

And here, below, is what I was left with:  enough acorns to pack away in wet sand and stick in the fridge for Winter:

Next Spring, I'll pot them up and see if we can grow our own columnar trees from acorns.