Spring Wrap Up

mbelcher Uncategorized

This post is a cross-post originally written for bellevueplantingproject.org/, the site dedicated to my free native plant giveaway project.

Plant giveaway recap:

I highly overestimated just how many people would want “big trees” after the ice storm.

I ordered 400 trees from the IL State Nursery back in April, 50 each of

  • Chickasaw Plum (Prunus angustifolia),
  • Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana),
  • Shellbark Hickory (Carya laciniosa),
  • Pecan (Carya illinoinensis),
  • Silky Dogwood (Cornus amomum),
  • Hazelnut (Corylus americana),
  • Bur Oak (Quercus macrocarpa),
  • Fragrant Sumac (Rhus aromatica),

And I had another 50 Elderberry shrubs that I grew out from cuttings over the winter, and over a dozen clustered mountain mint cuttings I potted up in empty toilet paper rolls to give away. Both elder and mint cuttings were a hit, and both were sourced from my own garden. I’ll be looking into doing that more often moving forward.

I had a very large pot of Maypop seeds germinating over winter with the hopes of giving those away, but they didn’t sprout until mid May, and are still a little small to transplant.

I also had two 5 gallon buckets with a layer of acorns I was planning on giving away. One of willow oak, and the other bur oak. Neither were ready for the giveaway, but the willow oak have since sprouted beautifully and will hopefully be ready for a fall giveaway. The bur oak…. did not fair well and only one sprouted. Luckily they’re cheap enough from Illinois.

At the end of the giveaway I had a few left over but was quickly able to get those distributed through social media posts and reddit.

Lessons learned: keep it small. With a one-day distribution window it’s better to run out or have very few left over than be stuck with 6-8 year-old pecan and oak seedlings.

Big news!

I’m speaking at the Nashville Native Plant Symposium in August!

My talk is “Rewilding our Diet: Using Native Plants for Community Food Resilience”. I believe tickets are still available at nashvillenativeplantsymposium.org.

I’ll be posting more about the research and talk I’m giving later.