90's Direct Seeding Effort Revisited

In 1990 Doug Smith, a MetroParks staff member at Carriage Hill Farm noticed there was something wrong with succession in the nearby Carriage Hill MetroPark.  Doug was the Restoration Specialist at the Farm, in charge of restoring the farmstead there to its condition in the 1880's.  Doug knew (and knows) a lot about woodworking, and was really good at making just about anything from historic bridges to period furniture.  He also knew quite a bit about trees, and noticed that the natural succession taking place on the nearby abandoned farmland was not growing trees that would ever be useful to a woodworker.  Oak, hickory, walnut, and tuliptree, his favorites were few and far between, with virtually no small ones around.  Doug proposed planting these hardwoods into a designated timber management area to produce lumber for future generations.

In 1991 we designated about 20 acres for this task and the farm staff had the ground plowed and disked up.  For trees we went to see my dad, Gervais Nolin, in Fairborn.  I knew Dad had LOTS of acorns in the fall and to him disposing of them was a big nuisance.  We went to his place and hauled off many bags stuffed with acorns of white and bur oak and took them back to Carriage Hill.  The acorns were mixed with some black walnuts and hand broadcast over the field.

The first few years we could see some little oaks sprouting, but mostly very tall goldenrod and other herbaceous species.  Then we started noticing that rabbits were chewing the little oaks in the winter, sawing them off like little beavers.  At the same time white-tailed deer were having a population boom, and they loved eating the oaks that got by the mice.  Should any oak have the temerity to withstand this browsing they inevitably were used by bucks to rub the velvet of their antlers.  As a result the trees were cut, eaten, or de-barked every year.  This was pretty discouraging so we admitted defeat and pretty much gave up on the project.  A few years later the staff at the farm decided they needed some more ground for crop production and plowed up much of it for that purpose.

Conservation Technician Rob Ligas standing in thick stand of white and bur oak planted  by seeding in 1991.

Fast forward to 2010.  Conservation Biologist Mike Enright was laying out zones for the new controlled bowhunting program at Carriage Hill.  One day he came into the office and asked if anyone knew where all theyoung oaks out there came from.  What?!  How many?  Oh at least a couple hundred.  We went out there soon after that and I was delighted find it just as he said, several hundred bur and white oaks ranging in size from 2 -20 feet high.  Some had obviously been chewed, eaten, rubbed many times only to sprout again.  Many had multiple stems, and the whole area had become overgrown with shrubs, particularly Amur honeysuckle and autumn olive.  Mike and his staff went to work clearing out the invasive shrubs and found that many more stunted survivors were out there.

Since then the trees have been pruned to allow one lead stem, additional tree species have been planted (and protected by tree shelters), and the failure has turned into a least a partial success.  It could have been a much greater success if we had not given up and allowed it to be plowed for crops.  Oh well, live and learn.  In this case, don't give up!

Direct Seeding Efforts Completed

Seed collected from the successful "Go Nuts" campaign http://www.metroparks.org/Reforestation/GoNuts.aspx
was planted at Carriage Hill MetroPark on November 9.  A twenty acre field at Carriage Hill MetroPark was plowed and disked by a local farmer.  MetroParks Conservation Staff Steve Sherman, Alyssa Balter, and Matt Parker distributed the precious harvest. Sherman drove the ATV in lines across the field while Parker and Baltar flung the seeds from the back.  The farmer then disked the seed into the soil.

Matt Parker and Alyssa Balter fling the harvest while Steve Sherman drives.

The seed was worked into the ground by disking

Planting area at Carriage Hill MetroPark

Mixed mast harvest from "Go Nuts" campaign

The seeding rate was about 4 gallons of mixed seed per acre.  The buckets of mixed seed contained white oak, bur oak, swamp white oak, chinquapin oak, pignut hickory, shagbark hickory, mockernut hickory, shellbark hickory, flowering dogwood, Ohio buckeye, and blackhaw viburnum.

This was the first try at large scale direct seeding for MetroParks since the 1990's.  That planting was at first deemed a failure.  In fact it turned out to be rather successful, which just goes to show that land restorers should not write off a project too soon because the results are not visible right away!  The next post will be about that interesting effort.

Successful Seed Collection!

Five Rivers MetroParks had a very successful seed collection season.  The agency initiated the "Go Nuts" campaign to inform and galvanize the public to collect oak and hickory seeds to be used for reforestation.

Volunteers came in all ages!

Freshly collected seed

It was a great mast year for white oaks and hickories, and enthusiastic supporters did not let us down.  Volunteers were encouraged to collect the seeds from natural areas, do the "float test" to determine if the seed was viable, and turn them in to one of two facilities for processing.  .  At Cox Arboretum Hort Tech Meredith Cobb and her team of dedicated "Tree Corps" volunteers put in many hours work to sort, test, bag, and label the seeds.  Altogether about 200 gallons of viable seed was collected.  Most seed collected was oak and hickory since these important canopy trees are not spreading well.  Species collected in bulk were white oak, bur oak, chinquapin oak, swamp white oak, shagbark hickory, pignut hickory, and bitternut hickory.  Lesser quantities of mockernut hickory, shellbark hickory, red oak, and shumard oak were also collected.  Many other species were collected in smaller quantities, particularly native shrubs and understory species such as spicebush and  flowering dogwood.

About 1/3 of the seed collected is being kept at Cox Arboretum to be used in late winter to propagate about 14,000 seedlings for the popular and successful Forest Foster Tree program.  This program gets the seedlings started, then distributed to volunteers who care for them at home over the summer.  They are then planted at MetroParks restoration areas the following spring.

Mixed seed ready for planting

The remainder of the seeds are being used for an additional reforestation technique, direct seeding.  Two small 5- acre fields (Germantown and Carriage Hill MetroParks) and one large 20 acre field (Carriage Hill MetroPark) were prepared for planting. Seeds from the fall collection were mixed together to match the soils of each site.  On October 26 and 27 volunteers planted the two smaller sites with specially made acorn dibble sticks made from pvc pipe.

Nut planting with pvc dibbles at Germantown MetroPark

The larger site is going to be planted with a tractor mounted salt spreader in the next couple of weeks.  I'll post about how that goes.