More work photos!

A few more photos from work.  Most of these are from the week of packing that happens at this time of year.  The seedlings are sorted, boxed up and conditioned for the winter for us and other companies to plant out in the spring.  The sorting is the most confusing as there are hundreds of different seed zones, progenies and clones to keep separate.

Kiln Room. aka soon-to-be-also-humidity-&-dry-room. So for cones like Black Spruce, Western Larch, White Spruce etc. we let them dry at ambient in an attempt to open them. Then to open them further, they are soaked in buckets of water, popped into screen trays and kilned at 60°C for about 7 hours. This forces them open a bit more and it's done 3 times with tumbling in between. This is standard for forestry but I'm taking samples from this kilning to see if the quality of the seed decreases as well.

  

Western Larch ready to be kilned. These cones produced about a handful of seed! We are on the range limit for Western Larch and it's not uncommon that they don't set seed properly.

And this is my newest toy!  The Dinolite isn't as good as Wolfy's setup obviously but it's still pretty cool!  :)