TreeTopics

By Amy Grotta, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Columbia, Washington & Yamhill Counties

Dark and gloomy. — Dark and gloomy: the escaped Christmas trees at Tualatin River Farm

It’s a familiar story. A few acres of Christmas trees were planted on the farm, perhaps for tax purposes, or because they were perceived as a low-maintenance investment, or maybe because the market was strong at the time. Fast forward a couple decades…the land has changed hands, and the Christmas trees, well, they never did make it into someone’s living room. Now, the new owner has “escaped” Christmas trees to contend with.

This is the situation at Tualatin River Farm, a 60-acre property now under a conservation easement and being turned into a working educational and demonstration farm and riparian restoration site. About five acres of the site is in this old noble fir plantation, presumed to have been planted for Christmas trees, and estimated to be about 25 years old. The new property managers wish to transform this area into a mixed upland forest, more representative of what might naturally occur on the site. What to do, they asked? Can these trees be saved? Continue reading →

By Amy Grotta, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Columbia, Washington & Yamhill Counties

Typically, northwest Oregon forests are considered in terms of their high productivity, their ecological characteristics, or their contribution to the state’s economy. But how do our forests shape the rural communities they surround? And how do these communities influence the forests?

These questions have been on my mind over the past couple years, as I’ve been working with community members in Vernonia on a study of “community vitality”*. Ninety-five percent of the land surrounding Vernonia is forest, and most is privately owned. So, it would seem natural that forests and forestry are important to the local economy and culture. We wanted to dig deeper into these assumptions, so we examined existing data plus information from surveys that we conducted last summer. Continue reading →

By Amy Grotta, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Columbia, Washington & Yamhill Counties

A free-to-grow tree coexisting with its early seral neighbors

Early seral…it’s one of the biggest buzzwords in Pacific Northwest forestry these days. But what is it? Put simply, early seral refers to the first stage in forest development following any disturbance, including wind, ice, fire or logging. An early seral, or early successional community is made up of the first colonizers of a forest opening: grasses, other herbaceous plants and broadleaf shrubs. Continue reading →

By Paul Wilson, Columbia County Master Woodland Manager

My cats get me up every morning by 7:30. They get fed. I check the rain gauge.

Then I record the amount and other observations on a website. After more than a year, I have a habit. It’s simple, useful, and fun.

We’re five years into reforesting a clearcut. The early spring after our first planting was unusually dry, but the effects varied a lot even on our small forest. Clatskanie averages almost five feet of rain a year. Even so, we lost a lot of site-adapted seedlings because they dried out – in February and March. Soil differences played a role. But where we were able to irrigate a bit the trees thrived.

Last fall we saw a blurb in the paper about the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow (CoCoRaHS) network. When we checked out the CoCoRaHS website there was only one regularly reporting volunteer in Columbia County. There are official weather stations around – the City of Clatskanie, the Kelso airport, and others, but none seemed to describe what happens right here. Continue reading →

By Amy Grotta, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension, Columbia, Washington & Yamhill Counties

Our Master Woodland Manager trainee class wraps up next week, after sixty-plus hours of learning and sharing together over the past six months. As an instructor, what I’ve enjoyed the most of this experience is that over half of our instructional time has been spent in the field, doing hands-on activities designed to encourage critical thinking about the day’s topic.

For each class session, we’ve tried to hone in on a few key themes. One theme for our forest health session was the importance of being observant in diagnosing a pest or disease. Our instructor, Dave Shaw, had the class look methodically for signs and symptoms at each site we visited. Where on the tree is the problem noticeable? Was there a pattern to the damage across the stand? What’s going on at the ground level? Any signs of chewing, wounding or scraping? What else is going on in the area?

Twice that day, we learned how easy it can be to prematurely jump to conclusions about a forest health problem, without pausing to get the full picture of what’s going on around you. We went to one site where there was extensive mortality of young Douglas-fir trees. Knowing that laminated root rot is the #1 most common disease in the area, when we walked into the stand and saw symptoms consistent with laminated root rot, most of the group who had seen it before agreed that it was the likely cause. But it was not until we started excavating around some of the dead trees that we found signs of two other root diseases, as well. Continue reading →

By Amy Grotta, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Columbia, Washington & Yamhill Counties

In one word, what’s this a picture of?

Last month, the Port of Portland rejected a billboard that was proposed for the Portland airport. “Welcome to Oregon: Home of the Clearcut”, reads the ad, developed by a coalition of groups that oppose legislation that would increase timber harvests on federal lands. Now a subject of a free-speech debate, the fate of the billboard is unclear.

The billboard is meant to be provocative. But what interests me more than the billboard itself, or even the purpose behind it, is the public’s reaction, as expressed in various Letters to the Editor in the Oregonian. These letters reveal wide-ranging perceptions of what forests and forestry are (and aren’t). Continue reading →

By Brad Withrow-Robinson, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Benton, Linn & Polk Counties

Even a wall of blackberries can be tackled

In recent entries in this series on the basics of herbicide use in weed control, I have reviewed how some foliar herbicides work, and the relationship between the plant’s physiology and the herbicides’ behavior. Now I want to illustrate how that that information translates to what gets done in the woods, looking at controlling blackberries, a frequent target of foliar herbicides.

Blackberries are a problem because they are widely dispersed by birds and start readily from seed and once established, rapidly spread vegetatively by tip rooting, quickly forming daunting patches seemingly too tall and wide to tackle. We’ve all seen these conditions in old pastures, riparian areas and struggling plantations. Continue reading →

By Brad Withrow-Robinson, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Benton, Linn & Polk Counties

In previous installments of this series on the basics of herbicide use in weed control, I distinguished between foliar and soil active herbicides, describing foliar herbicides as those applied to the leaves or stems of plants to be absorbed and carried throughout the plant to affect control. In the previous post I began discussing foliar herbicides in more detail with an overview of glyphosate.

In this entry I will look at a group of herbicides called “growth regulators” that include some important foliar herbicides and popular weed and brush killers commonly used in forestry, agriculture and habitat restoration. Continue reading →

By Brad Withrow-Robinson, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Benton, Linn & Polk Counties

In my previous installment of this series on the basics of herbicide use in weed control, I distinguished between foliar and soil active herbicides. In this post I begin discussing foliar herbicides in more detail. Note: The attention given to herbicides in this series does not indicate an advocacy for their use but an acknowledgement that using herbicides presents some unique risks, and that landowners and managers need to know enough about them to make informed decisions on their use.

Foliar herbicides are applied to the leaves or stems of plants to be absorbed and carried throughout the plant to affect control. They are common and widely used to control annual and perennial herbs and also woody shrubs. Continue reading →

By Brad Withrow-Robinson, OSU Forestry & Natural Resources Extension – Benton, Linn & Polk Counties

Weed control is a top of mind topic now for many landowners. Following this spring’s strong log market, a lot of folks will be reforesting a harvest unit. Others may be planting a field of Christmas trees, or a swath of trees and shrubs as a restoration project to improve habitat conditions. And it seems everyone is struggling to control one invasive weed or another on the property.

While a number of approaches and strategies (including mowing, pulling and mulching) can and are used in managing weeds, many people will use herbicides as at least part of their approach. This is no surprise given their demonstrated effectiveness and efficiency. But not all users are well-versed in vegetation management, or the science behind it, so some review of herbicides seems to be in order. The attention given to herbicides in this and later articles does not indicate an advocacy for their use but an acknowledgement that using herbicides presents some unique risks, and that landowners and managers need to know enough about them to make informed decisions on their use.

Now, it is important to realize that one need not be a crop scientist to use herbicides. The label gives instructions that ensure the safe and allowable use of an herbicide, so the label needs to be read and followed. But responsible and effective use of herbicides requires some additional understanding about herbicides and how they work, as well as knowledge about the life cycle and other characteristics of both crop and target plant species they will be used with. Let’s begin talking about some basics. Continue reading →

TreeTopics

Serving small woodland owners and managers in the Willamette Valley and northwest Oregon

Contending with overgrown Christmas trees

How communities and natural resources interact – an example from Vernonia, Oregon

Chasing early seral

Rainfall monitoring pays off

Pest Scene Investigation

Choosing your words carefully

Using foliar herbicides: Getting the bang for your buck

Understanding foliar herbicides – part 2

Understanding foliar herbicides – part 1

Weed control and herbicide basics

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