Now that I finally have room to plant as many trees as I can possibly wish to, I'm pondering starting a nursery for tree seeds, to supply seedlings for the farm. I do a lot of straw bale/deep mulch gardening for my veggies, and I'm contemplating doing something similar to start oaks and other trees/shrubs. Here's what I'm thinking so far: Digging a long narrow trench in a well drained location, filling with straw, old hay, leaves, etc. . I'm considering lining the bottom with hardware cloth, and perhaps a permeable weed barrier before filling. Along the sides of the trench I would install some 1X6 lumber I have laying around, both to provide an edge to prevent weed/turf encroachment, as well as giving me something to secure a hardware cloth cover to, keeping rodents at bay. I'd like to remove and plant the seedlings before they get too tall, but maybe I should consider a hoop cover of some type so that I could let them get a little bigger for fall transplanting. Whatever I use for a growing medium needs to be composted enough to allow easy root removal, I'm hoping to drop acorns/seeds into the bed in the fall, transplant young seedlings 10 months or so later. Thoughts? I'm sure someone here has done something like this before.