Are you sure it is the grass and sawdust that is the problem?

While shade might possible have caused it, I would tend to suspect more the salts and alkilinity of the mushroom compost, and possible lack of water.

I volunteer with a similar project - restoring a natural stream bed and ravine in my neighborhood. It can be frustrating. We lose plants every year too.

You are bound to lose some ordering so far in advance and trying to keep so many alive over the hot summer in small pots.

As to planting 4' seems a bit much. You will have to clear away the blackberries and whatever other weeds and unwanted intruders are there to give the plants their best chance, but 4' is not always possible. The more space you can give them the better, of course.

We have always been able to order large truckloads of wood chips from the city (for free) to mulch planting areas once we are done. Can you check with your local municipality? The chips would be better than sawdust for mulch.

They did everything wrong. Keeping 10,000 plants alive in containers is a big job. It should have been contracted out to a nursery. Or someone who knew what he was doing should have been in charge.

Do you know how much work it's going to be to plant all those potted plants? You will have to dig a hole for each one, and then fill around the plant by hand. If you were planting bareroot plants in Fall, you just cut a slot in the ground (with a shovel) and stick them in, and squeeze some dirt against the roots with the shovel.

I'm a native plant lover, but dealing with preservationists drives me crazy. Especially the preservation-industrial complex, the people who make a living on preservation. They know everything, and they have been divinely anointed. If you try to help them or give them advice, they will never speak to you again. They just want your money and political support.

Why would a bare-rooted plant have a magic ability to grow well in a slit that a potted plant didn't have? Have you ever thought about that? It's the same plant whether it came out of a storage facility with no soil on it or out of a pot, with the soil taken off right before planting (as it should be). If anything, the potted plant would be in better shape to tolerate a rough situation at planting.

The condition of a plant before planting has a critical effect on establishment.

I guess those making reforestation (timber) plantings just stick 'em in because enough survive and grow anyway to serve their purposes.

I'm having a problem with ordering 10,000 plants bare rooted in one gallon pots in the Spring and expecting to keep them alive all summer with just volunteers.
You gotta be a pro to pull that off.
Why not order the plants in the Fall?

10,000 plants that require 16 sq. ft. of room each (4X4) is a big area! What were they thinking?
Fiasco is right.
I have a bit of a problem with native only freaks myself.
Most of them are in some kind of a 101 class.
Mike

The 4' space I took to be for ones that were planted out in their final positions.

Lilydude, I feel exactly the same way about them. Every word you posted is true in this case. It is amazing how much funding this one agency gets. And try to tell them anything? They're biologists, and know everything. I normally keep my mouth shut to the employees because hey, it's a job, but I did ask one lady why they ordered the plants so early. She said it had to do with funding.

I am afraid of the actual planting process too, which unfortunately I will be present for. The plants will have to be lugged down streambanks, often through thick underbrush. Oh, and through the actual streams themselves. Oh joy. DNR (Department of Natural Resources) has it right - carry the trees bareroot on your back and stick them in. We have lots of forests to prove that approach is the proper one. Thank you for letting me rant.

First, I can understand your frustration.......dealing with a bureaucracy of any kind can be a difficult process and government agencies are right up there!!

Yes, the process was probably not handled as efficiently and as correctly as it could have been. But the loss of 650 plants out of 10,000 is not bad.....one expects that sort of failure rate with bare root seedlings.

I'd question the use of mushroom compost as a planting medium. First, compost of any kind is not a suitable container medium - it compacts too easily and you lose aeration and therefore drainage. And mushroom compost tends to be rather harsh, with lots of salts and on the alkaline side. Plants native to this area would prefer an acidic medium.

I'd also question why the plants were not planted when received. Early spring planting of bare root stock is pretty common and to have done so then would have eliminated the need for a) potting up in an unsuitable medium, b) having to tend to the plants during the growing season, and c) lugging around potted plants to various awkwardly accessed planting locations when toting a bundle of bare root seedlings would have been so much easier.

bboy, so did I. That's a lot of clearing!
Mike

The question as to why they weren't planted bareroot on arrival is a fabulous one. I don't have an answer, and probably never will. However, I presume it has to do with the fact that the bigwigs have no horticulture background and this is the first year native plants have been ordered to replace the dead knotweed. And there is the arrogance factor that cannot be underestimated i.e., we're biologists and know everything. Yes, the volunteer with me in the potting up process agreed that mushroom compost wasn't the best medium.

I didn't know that it was high in salts, but I can tell you that the trees turned brown and died quickly after potting.

I feel your pain Drtdgr. "No horticulture background" is the key. I can't believe the way they waste our tax dollars by giving oversight control to the completely inexperienced. We had a big stream restoration project up here in Marysville that included hundreds of native plants plus the labor for planting. The only trouble was that whoever approved the plant list only knew what state the list said the plants were native to, not what kind of areas that it actually grows in. For instance they planted gobs of nice big bushy healthy pines right at stream level, only a few feet from the water and less than a mile from Puget Sound. Every single one is dead now of course and the stream looks exactly like it did before we wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on some bureaucrat's "learning experience".
- Tom

Gosh, I so appreciate everyone's comments. There is a running joke (among ourselves of course) that all projects need to be done over three times there, and I figure that will be the case with the plants. It is a waste.

Unexpectedly, there is a site near Kent were a planting of Ponderosa pines has grown for years in water. And their tops look pretty much normal.

Presumably these Marysville trees were shore pines, and just maybe somebody chose them because the species grows in bogs in the area. I've been to a site east of Everett where I walked among natively growing shore pines that had high water marks on their trunks well above head height.

The companion shrub I remember was redtwig dogwood.

Of course, plunging nursery stock into a swamp, that did not come up there on its own can be a different story.

I hear you.

I am a professional restoration ecologist, with a horticulture background - very rare. Most restorationists will not hire horticulturalists as they think we can't possibly have anything to offer, it's a specialized field, no one else can have the skills and knowledge they have. B.S. Fortunately my boss did not buy into that and hired me precisely because of my landscaping background. He had 80 acres of Scotch broom he needed spot sprayed and he wanted someone accustomed to hard work, not someone with a list of straight-A botany classes and her nose in the air. Although he may rethink this sometimes as I keep identifying escaped and naturalizing ornamentals in his restoration areas! like we don't have enough invasives to deal with as it is.

Yes it is extremely frustrating to see the "restorationists" having to re-invent the wheel the hard way, repeatedly. And they will not ask for advice beforehand. I'm often asked what the difference is between a horticulturalist and a botanist, and the difference is, the horticulturalist knows how to grow stuff, but botanists don't, they just know what the wild plants are and how they're classified. Botanists all too often have black or brown thumbs, just like the general public.

And it is extremely frustrating to see who gets hired to plan and oversee these projects! I volunteer with a couple of local stream restoration nonprofits also, and jeez louise, these people sure don't know much about native plants and pre-settlement ecology! Admittedly there are limitations on what they can accomplish - they can only plant the species that are available in the trade at a price that fits their limited budgets, and they can only put in the installation and maintenance labor they can muster with volunteers. There's the widespread concept that everything should be planted in doug fir and red cedar, and those species are available in large numbers at low prices, but jeez, what about all the land that historically was Garry oak riparian woodland, or the native wet meadows??? They're being converted to coniferous forest, and eliminating any chance of restoration to historic conditions and losing habitat for specialized species.

There was a story out not too long ago about some land trust north of Seattle somewhere, Skagit or Stillaguamish, that was about to plant some riparian land in doug fir and red cedar to 'restore' it for salmon, until a biological survey found Oregon spotted frogs using the area. They're very endangered, and planting any trees, let alone conifers, would have eliminated them - they need open sunny wet meadows. Our 'restoration' work is contributing to the decline of this species and others! And how many of these organizations are doing thorough biological surveys before launching their 'restoration' projects?? especially with there being only about a 4 week window of time you can reasonably survey for the OR spotted frog, and similar limitations on surveying for other rare species. The spotted frogs and the salmon used to coexist, the salmon don't need every inch of streambank planted in conifers, it's just that that's all these people know to do.

I keep volunteering though, as the best chance at changing things is going to be from the inside.

Everything they did was wrong, as already stated. Mushroom compost is not suitable as a potting medium. Sitting plants on tarps is dumb. I understand about having the grant to buy stuff NOW. Grants tend to expire at the end of June, but you want to plant things in fall, not spring. But the whole thing is just a fiasco, as you said.

I am so glad I posted on this topic. That is a very interesting commentary on restoration. I appreciate the input. It makes it easier to understand their mentality.