SMOOTH BROME: BLOG

The pine in this picture is a seedling planted in fall 2019. There was very limited growth of the pines between 2019 and 2021, and I stopped paying much attention. (The pines don't need landscape rings, and much of the energy during 2022-2024 was setting landscape rings up for everything else.) Then I turned around and the pines had grown from 18" to five feet tall! By the way, the balsamroots to the left (it is June so they are going dormant) are 2017 planted balsamroots.

Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana). This is the same chokecherry as in Summer 2022, note the growth! Due the growth, the vole basket has been replaced by a vole ring, and the landscape cloth (with bark on top) has been extended outside the vole ring. (There is a general sense that the size of the landscape cloth needs to be larger than the growth, or the growth will choke off.) In this case, the landscape cloth ring is probably getting too small and needs to be up-sized.

Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia): The serviceberries responded very well to the landscape cloth + bark approach. (Compare this image to the 2020 images.) At this stage of growth, the vole baskets have been removed and replaced with white rodent wraps.

Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana): Summer 2022 was full of significant learning (but not enough pictures!). The first huge learning was that plants planted in the fall of 2021 with 8" rings of landscape cloth (done in an attempt to avoid the annoying spring project of removing and clipping grass on all the baskets) were outperforming plants planted during fall 2019! This was true for everything (only a chokecherry is shown, but the change was clear on every 2021 plant). This immediately triggered a massive project to provide ALL the plantings with landscape cloth trapped inside the vole basket or ring. (THIS was so successful it was immediately followed by a 2nd round with a ring of landscape cloth fitting outside the vole basket). The reason this works, of course is that it kills the brome within the root ring of the plant, without allowing other nasty things to seed in.

Serviceberry (Amelanchier alnifolia): The serviceberries are doing great! Amazingly, this is their third summer and they've "caught" now. They put on significant growth in Spring 2020 and are still looking very healthy even in mid-August in a very dry summer. About 1/3 of them have outgrown their vole baskets, and the baskets have been replaced with vole "rings" to continue to provide protection during in the winter.

Ponderosa Pine (Pinus ponderosa): The ponderosa pines were all planted in fall of 2019, and they are doing very well, in spite of some mistakes on my part with regards to voles. The issue was that the 2019 Ponderosa saplings were NOT protected with vole rings due to my (incorrect!) belief that the voles would not be interested in them. Unfortunately, during the winter, almost all of them were "vole-nibbled". However, only two died from this (both being girdled, *SIGH*) while the remainder seem to be going strong. Obviously, they are now all protected by vole rings or mouse guards.

Chokecherry (Prunus virginiana): The chokecherries were planted during fall 2019 and are not doing as well as the other plants above. They DID do well during the spring, both putting on growth and flowering, but have been looking rather unhappy during this hot unusually dry summer. A couple are being maintained on drip, and a couple are being allowed to go dormant and we'll see how this plays out next season. These are gorgeous plants when mature, so there is some inclination to pamper them a bit to get them established.

The long term future of the quaking aspen are not clear. Some are clearly struggling, while others seem to be making it. The quaking aspen are (largely) being planted in locations where the soils is saturated during spring run-off. The downside is this same area is VERY dry in the summer.