early Spring

The oaks on the Reserve are flowering. Full boar. It's the 30th of November. I expect them to flower in March and April.

It's dry and hot and windy. The mustard and radish are flowering, and some garden plants have never stopped. Not totally unusual.

From a restoration perspective, I will need to bump up timing on weed removal efforts, expecting a very early Spring. My years paying close attention to central California weather patterns isn't nearly long enough to understand them.

weed terminator

As I was pulling veldt grass (Ehrharta erecta) in the oak woodlands this afternoon, I thought of a great analogy for who I was and what I was doing. I am a weed terminator. I seek out my plant victim and kill it. I will not stop. I will find every last plant. I will persist and be consistent. Elkhorn Road runs right above this site and carries thousands of E. erecta plants and this is a problem I'll need to deal with creatively.

 Here is my veldt grass bouquet, just before I bagged it. It is flowering already. I came not a moment too soon.

The veldt grass is easy to spot right now since most other plants are just greening up and it's not too thick yet. The wide lime green leaves give it away. Thankfully I have an eye for detail.

While I was pulling, a group of Townsend's warblers (I think - amateur birder here) came through, snacking on insects? on the oaks.

And another oak was beginning to flower, barely unwrapping it's stamens.

Nasturtium removal at the Springer property

Last season we started working on a one acre patch of Nasturtium that had jumped the neighbors fence and is slowly taking over the understory of a beautiful oak woodland. Nasturtium is very easy to control with hand removal, even though it is a prolific seeder.

Our volunteer stewardship team planted over 600 plants in tight planting clusters and cleared five 3 meter by 3 meter experimental plots. In the small plots, we will remove Nasturtium and any other non-native plants and monitor what comes up on it's own for the next two seasons. This will help me to know if we can ease up on planting and perhaps just control the invasive species, at least in part of the site.

 The extra help from the volunteers is invaluable. After our planting we had a picnic and shared stories and snacks.

Central California Invasive Weed Symposium part 2

Last Friday, people gathered at the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds to learn about invasive non-native plants. The theme was fire, water, action. Jon Keeley was the keynote and the evaluations said he was fantastic. (I was dealing with a coffee crisis so I didn't get to hear his talk.) We had some time for laws and regs so folks could get continuing education units.

Tool tailgate.

 

complete with goats

 

and a hydro-obliterator, but no picture of that. Apparently the obliterator can cut down a small tree with a fast stream of water. Good for cape ivy. Can be dangerous of not used properly.

We tried to green the event as much as we could, serving mostly local and organic food, composting, and recycling.

And we had wonderful sponsors; Cal-IPC, CHCF, Elkhorn Slough Foundation, Target Specialty, Big Sur Land Trust, CNPS, and so many more.

Thankfully, a good percentage of people filled out and turned in evaluations so we can make next year even better. The number one most favorite thing about the event - the chance to get together with others in the field, collaborating, and connecting.

Saturday was a field trip to Watsonville Wetlands Watch, High Ground Organics farm, and Ellicott Slough. It was fantastic. Such a great opportunity to see projects in action and talk about methods in the field.

Central California Invasive Weed Symposium Part 1

I am excited to attend the 11th Annual Central California Invasive Weed Symposium tomorrow and field trip on Saturday. This is a joint venture between the Monterey and Santa Cruz County Weed Management Areas. I look forward to talking with others working on removing invasive plants, learning new tools and skills, and seeing projects in progress first hand. I've enjoyed helping to bring this symposium to fruition. I hope it all goes well.

women growing natives

A few weeks back I threatened myself to start up a group of women who grow native plants for restoration. I was just getting a group like this together in the San Francisco Bay Area before I left and moved back here. Well lo an behold I sent out the word, it has spread like wildfire, and we have a substantial group very excited to get together. So the dream is happening. We have a location, a list of people, a couple of items to chat about, and I know we'll have good food.

This is about collaboration and sharing information. The nursery trade can be a bit lonely, and honestly, I think we like it like that. However, all of us collectively hold a vast amount of information and knowledge learned over many years of trial and error, and if we can share that with one another, we can be that much more effective in our work to restore function in habitats.

volunteers rock

The most recent volunteer class has graduated some very awesome people, some of whom choose to spend their time with stewardship. I have had a recent boost in volunteer activity and it has given me a push and a shove into extreme productivity and a fresh look at the potential to make a difference.

We couldn't do half of what we do without volunteers. It sounds like a broken record, but it's the truth.  Plus working with others is simply more fun. Today we had 25 year volunteer veterans working side by side with brand new volunteers.

So I want to take a moment to thank those who give their time and energy to causes they believe in. These Slough volunteers inspire me every day.

guzzlers and other small freshwater sites

The Reserve maintains several human-made freshwater sites. A few are large seasonal ponds and some are much smaller. These smaller freshwater spring substitutes we call guzzlers, originally put in in the 80's. We have 18 in all.

 

Most of the guzzlers have native vegetation and cover providing refuge for lots of different critters. My goal is to recreate conditions that might exist at a freshwater spring site. Few of these reference sites remain in the watershed, but there are some.

We also have two small excavated areas that hold freshwater some months of the year. Right now, when all other large ponds are dry, these two smaller ones continue to hold water since the recent 4 inch rain event.

Shirley Murphy investigates one of the smaller ponds.

 

dirt

Working with plants so much I can't help but contemplate soil. As the volunteers and I pulled old hemlock stalks to clear a new restoration site today, I kept thinking about dirt. How does it change with different plants? How does that change affect the progression of plants at a site? How long might it take to return to "healthy" soil? What is healthy soil anyway?

Over the years I've been told or read various things about how different plants and disturbance regimes can change the structure, composition and critter make-up of the soil. Sometimes false information is passed down, based on a few observations or poorly drawn conclusions. Sometimes not. The process of exchange between a plant, the soil, the critters (from bacteria and microorganisms to birds), and air is incredibly complex. I don't pretend to completely understand it. But I need to know certain information so I can best plan for system recovery at a site.

Here's an example of the complexity of change in soil. Some folks on the peninsula at Edgewood Park, are helping the recovery of the threatened bay checkerspot butterfly by focusing on the problem of added nitrogen to serpentine soil which promotes growth of certain plants that then crowd out host plants for the butterfly. (http://www.butterflyrecovery.org/species_profiles/bay_checkerspot/)

I hope to embark on a new monitoring journey, focusing specifically on coast live oak understory, hemlock (Conium maculatum), italian thistle (Carduus pycnocephalus), maybe a few more weeds, and the soil before and after the addition of appropriate native plants and before and after removal of said weed. I have a bit of research and assessment to do. Maybe this has been done.

To be continued. . .