Garden Seedling Nursery

In the forest, we transplant as many of our own native grown seedlings as we can.

We have always had ok survival rates and are proud that we use our own seedlings that we thinned out of overpopulated areas of the forest to move them to areas that needed planting. But that process is very slow and the digging can injury the other seedlings growing close by. The growing process dramatically slows for the first couple of years since the trees are not used to yearly transplanting and moving like the nursery stock. The seedlings are willowy and tender compared to the nursery stock during those settling years and they are easily damaged.

To augment the bulk of the nursery seedlings and the process of transplanting our own seedlings, Marilyn took over a small section of the garden a few years ago and has been supplying the planting chore with seedlings started from our own seed stock. She is able to produce a couple hundred trees every year for planting in the forest along with our purchased seedlings from the nursery and our native transplants.

The corner of the garden started out as a pile of manure going on ten years ago. We had used off that nitrogen rich source for every section of the garden for years before we got the pile nearly down to dirt level then worked the remainder into the soil with the rototiller for several years. The seeds are planted directly into the earth where they grow at their own pace for at least a year before Marilyn transplants them into communal pots, with the pots sunk deep into the dirt. By keeping the soil around the pots we don’t have to worry about watering the seedlings during the summer time or bedding them in for the winter. The pots protect the roots from rodents while allowing worms to aerate the soil.

Most of the seedlings survive and those that do survive, get tougher with each passing season. Since we do not use any chemicals, sprays or fertilizer (the ground is already in wonderful condition because of the old manure pile), the trees are nearly as native as the ones we transplant from one area of the forest to another but this way we are able to do a much larger number of plants at a time. We can get 100 trees planted in the time it takes to dig and transplant 20 of the dig-to-thin variety. They are not as large a caliper (stem size) as the purchased seedlings and they are more tender, but there is no storage time in a cooler or travel from Washington State to Oregon where they piled in cold holding until they can be doled out and travel to the area where they are planted.

The seedlings in the garden plot are kept in those communal pots before being moved to their own pot for a year. At three years old, the seedlings are ready to be planted into the forest. Marilyn’s plot is just another way to keep the succession of tree planting on goal over the years.

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