News Letter & Agenda September 24 2021

Planning for planting days

September 24, 2021

Little Forests Kingston

“This is not our world with trees in it. It’s a world of trees, where humans have just arrived.” ~Richard Powers, The Overstory

Meeting September 25

Agenda: Tomorrow’s meeting will be all about helping us prepare for planting days. Below are some notes about planting days. During the meeting we’ll fine-tune our plan.

We’ll also talk about how to celebrate planting days with a festival. Sandra volunteered to organize a festival and has been putting some thought into this. She’ll present some initial ideas and facilitate a discussion during our meeting.

Before planting day

  1. Stephen marks out 1 metre grids with marker flags and string.

  2. Verbinnens delivers approximately 1800 saplings to HWY 15 on Monday October 18.

  3. Volunteers sort the trees at HWY 15 and transport to each site.

  4. We train tree planting coaches (no previous experience needed). We’re aiming for 1 coach for every 3 planters.

  5. Joyce creates a one page handout for planting the seedlings for volunteers to use on planting day.

Presorting the seedlings

This depends on whether we use the Afforest & IVN method or Miyawaki method. Miyawaki plants completely randomly with children (which means less survival of seedlings but the randomness is more similar to what might happen naturally.

Afforest distributes saplings as follows:

  1. Starting with canopy layer (tallest growing species) and the one for which we have the most saplings, spread over the entire area with as much distance between saplings as possible. Repeat with species for which we have the second most saplings. Continue until entire canopy layer is distributed.

  2. Follow with the understory layer, one species at a time, with as much distance between them as possible.

  3. Finally, distribute all the the saplings for the shrub layer.

  4. Ensure there are 3 saplings per square metre, ideally with saplings for three different layers on each square metre and avoiding placing species from the same species or layer next to each other. Ensure seedlings are spaced at least 30cm apart.

Another option if laying out using the Afforest method is to strategically arrange certain species. For example placing spring flowering understory trees along the forest edge for a strong spring floral display for passerby.

Planting

  1. Move mulch away from planting area.

  2. Dig a hole as deep and wide at the root system of the seedling.

  3. Sprinkle a teaspoon of mycorrhizae on the rootball.

  4. Place seedling in hole and push back the soil, patting it down with your hands.

  5. Spread mulch back towards the trunk, ensuring the mulch isn’t touching the trunk.

  6. Water with 8-10 litres of water.

  7. Offer a ritual or wish or ? (we may set up a station for people to create wishes for the saplings they plant).

Protecting the saplings

  1. We’ll be placing a marker flag beside each sapling either before planting or when planting.

  2. November, once the ground freezes up, we’ll put a recycled plastic spiral tree protector around each sapling & marker flag (marker flags act as supports for the protectors). We’ll be placing these after the ground freezes so that voles don’t decide to make their winter nest inside them.

Festival

Sandra is organizing a festival or celebration as well as documentation (videos, photos…) for planting day(s). She’ll be presenting some ideas during Saturday’s meeting.