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.