Dear Mary,

the prunus are plants that in nature develop without problems even from seed; in Italy many varieties of prunus are used for road trees, and it often happens to see small trees in the flower beds, at the foot of the larger ones, born precisely from the seeds contained in the fallen fruits; but if you have purchased the seeds, consider that you will have to make sure that they have the same treatment that the seeds have in nature: that is, the ripe fruits fall from the tree in late spring or in summer; in the ground the fruit pulp slowly rots, or is eaten by animals (which sometimes even eat the seeds and then expel them, since they cannot digest the woody integument that covers them); the seed is found, in one way or another, on the ground, naked, at the mercy of the elements, and spends all autumn and winter in the ground, exposed to cold, frost, sun, rain. Only the following year, between the end of winter and the beginning of spring, does it begin to germinate, because if it did it sooner the young plant would meet certain death. Therefore, your seeds should be placed in the refrigerator for at least 3-4 months, or scarified (i.e. the outer integument must be removed or abraded) and then put in the fridge for a few weeks anyway, dusted with fungicide and placed in a lot of sand. moist, in a bag or box (in the vegetable drawer). Only then can you sow them, otherwise the chances of them sprouting are certainly low. Once germinated, you will have to wait for them to reach a size sufficient to handle them, and then you will have to remove them from the planting tray and transplant them individually into jars large enough to hold them for the following year. Only when the seedlings are about 10-20 cm high can you start working them to get a bonsai; consider that for the first few months, the only thing you can do is put the metal wire (nice wide, to avoid that as it grows, the plant is strangled and marked by the wire) in order to give a certain movement to the stem and the first twigs. Meanwhile, cultivate the seedlings in the best way, providing them with watering only when the soil is dry, and fertilizer after 15 days, using a product for flowering plants. These plants will be placed in full sun in the cold and cool months, but in midsummer (and especially when they are tiny) they must necessarily be partially shaded, or the sun dries them up in a few hours.