1 June 03

Watering Valley Oaks

Our neighbor Jim has taken the initiative to start a valley oak restoration project along the UC Davis Putah Creek Riparian Reserve. For several months he has turned his carport into an oak nursery—collecting and germinating acorns, and growing the seedlings in pairs of half-gallon juice cartons duct-taped end-to-end together. Then with the help of a few volunteers and somebody to assist with the two-person auger, he planted about 80 or 90 seedlings along the north side of Putah Creek, in two locations.

wateringoaks.jpg
Summer is upon us—it was well in the nineties today, and we don’t expect to see rain again until at least October, so the plan is to water the seedlings every couple of weeks over the summer. This, it turns out, is a major project. Today was the kickoff watering session, and about a dozen volunteers showed up. Each oak seedling got five gallons of water, hauled in buckets quite laboriously from the creek. I’ll estimate we shifted about a ton-and-a-half of water in our three-hour long effort. We also engaged in a bit of weed-whacking, trying to keep the mulched circle around each seedling clear of star thistle and other nasties. At right is a photo of the bucket brigade.

Posted by at 08:25 PM in Nature and Place | Link |
  1. I’d like to participate in the next bucket brigade when it happens. How can I get on the list?
    V.

    — virginia    2. June 2003, 04:52    Link
  2. I’m involved in a project with sculptor, Bruce Johnson, for the new Santa Rosa Junior College library, creating minimal text to accompany four sculptures (one for each floor) made of an oak that had to be cut from the library site. Hungry for information about the valley oaks and their situation in Calif. today, I stumbled on your site. Wonderful to learn on the restoration Jim got going up your way. I’m interested in more info about Indian attitudes and practices related to these trees. I believe that our local Indian families were known to have “family trees”—particular trees cared for by generations of one family, from which they gathered acorns; but I had heard the valley oak acorns were somewhat scorned in favor of the more tasty live oak acorns. Does anyone know more about this? or more about other indigenous attitudes and practices related to the valley oaks?








    — elizabeth    10. April 2005, 06:18    Link

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