We started 2014 out with a BANG! Well lots of bangs really as shovels, TX toothpicks and pick mattox shoved their way into the ground and hit lots of stones along the way. On Saturday, January 25, 2014 we were fortunate to be a "Ready, Set, Plant!" site. The program is a partnership between TreeFolks and the City of Austin Parks and Recreation and Watershed Protection Departments. In response to the 2012 drought they moved away from planting as many large containerized trees and more towards small native bare root saplings. The bare root saplings take fewer resources, especially water to get established. While there is a higher mortality rate than large trees with an irrigation system when you plant 700 in one morning you can avoid to lose a few.
Here's a short video about bare root saplings that was filmed at Bartholomew Park just north of us last year. So it was a beautiful sight when dozens of volunteers gathered on a chilly morning to add 700 bare root saplings to our Hargrave Tributary Grow Zone.
Signing In
Orientation
Our Very Own Austin (wearing his TreeFolks Board of Directors hat) and Staryn (wearing his Watershed Protection Department Environmental Scientist hat) helped educate the crowd.
Parks and Recreation Staff gave a planting demo (but they cheated a bit and pre-dug a hole because our ground is so darned compacted) :-)
Then we got to work prying/poking/grunting our way to make little holes in the earth, dunk a bare root sapling in water, put it carefully into its new home, press the earth around it & put a flag beside it to help find it when it was watering time at the end. They were planted on 3' centers and even if only 10% survive we'll still have 70 beautiful natives along our creek to help slow water down, filter pollutants, and provide shade. Our natives were red mulberry, cedar elm, burr oak, hackberry , green ash, black locust, flameleaf sumac, & aromatic sumac. Won't it be fun when we can harvest mulberries in a few years?!
We were treated to homemade cookies by this little Friends of Boggy Creek & his mom, Mandy.
"flag man" was one of the most popular volunteers of the day and would run from spot to spot to gleefully mark newly planted trees
and then everything got a nice soaking
Let's hope we get 10% or more of these little ones to survive and thrive!
The next volunteer day is "It's My Park Day!" on March 1 from 9:30am-11:30am. Stay tuned for details.
