Christmas expansion

The project grew a bit larger this Christmas season.

How much larger? Here are two pictures for scale. One is a top down view of the current area of operations. The second is a zoomed out area with the first area inset for comparison. 

New total area outlined in red is now a bit over 12 acres, which is approximately 5 hectares. Magenta rectangle shows relative size of the sequoia patch within the larger area. 

The vast majority of the new land depicted with darker green is rough forested terrain. Several large hills are separated by deep creeks. 

The work to clear out space for the trails and new locations for sequoias will begin in the spring. There is also a plan to build a solar farm to supply the sequoia hill operations with energy.

In other news, Bitcoin hit an All Time High (ATH). 

Mid-December update on temperature data and walk-through video

 Two sensors have been collecting data for a bit over two weeks. 

It is quite remarkable how little the temperature underground changes. Now that we are in mid-December the temperature at one foot ground depth (blue line) have steadily dropped from about 6-6.5C to 4.5-5C. This winter was mild so far as can be observed by the above ground (red line) temperature staying well above freezing from noon through early evenings most days. 

So far there is no concern what so ever about tree roots access to liquid water. 

The next interesting step is 3 inches of snow that covered the ground today. The air temperatures are expected to stay below freezing next few days.

Video walk-through the park

End of 2020 Iowa giant sequoia growing season and winter preparation

Another growing season is over. It was a successful one. Despite the drought and a massive wind storm that literally changed the landscape for hundreds of miles, this little experiment lives on.

As reported earlier in September, there was practically no fungus attacks this season. It was probably due to a generally drier than normal summer but also probably because of the consistent application of an anti-fungal agent, chlorothalonil. Healthy green and blue-green looking trees are going for their winter hibernation phase. After trying several winter protection strategies in the previous years, this year I decided to try a different approach with some extreme winterization experiments. 

During the upcoming winter I decided to tackle two major variables  - water evaporation through the needles and root access to liquid water. For the former, I sprayed the foliage with anti-desiccant polymer and then wrapped the trees in some frost cover fabric, which is very light unwoven material. I used 3/8 inch rebar that is used in cement work to create pyramidal frames around single and groups of sequoia seedlings. It's an extremely cheap and simple way to construct a structure around trees. 10ft long rebar costs about $3.50 a piece. Sticking rebar in the ground and tying three or more ends with a zip-tie takes only a minute creating an improvised teepee. After the trees are wrapped in fabric and teepee frame is constructed, then I used a roll of wide packing plastic to create a winter/moisture barrier by wrapping it around the metal frame. 

I made sure to leave a hole on the top of the teepees that would allow extra moisture to escape the housing. There are some variables in the set up as I used more or less wrapping material and bigger and smaller holes on the top to control amount of evaporation. 

After the teepees were constructed I watered all sequoias with generous amount of water and buried the area around the pyramids with 6-8 inches of mulch.

Which brings us to the next topic of root water access. 

It is clear that sequoias are greatly affected by the loss of moisture during cold Iowa winters. In general, it is stated that this area in Iowa has 3 to 4 feet deep frost line for the purposes of house and other structure construction. In my own experiments I find that it's actually closer to 2 feet, but I can certainly see how it can get deeper during extremely cold winters. Once the ground is frozen solid there is little that sequoia roots can do to replenish lost needle water. Some trees adapted to these conditions and remarkably many local conifers can survive a total root freeze, but realistically, not every seedling of even the hardiest of them all - eastern red cedar - survives such conditions. I had dozens of red cedar seedlings perished during winter. Needless to say, sequoias are not as hardy as red cedar. Controlling the way how the roots fare during  winter would be an interesting endeavor. 

The idea is that as the trees get older and develop their root system, enough of the roots would penetrate the frost line, providing the tree with water during cold winter months. The feeder roots of sequoia are located very close to the surface, which creates a clear problem for growing sequoias in such a harsh climate. The challenge is to create ground conditions that would allow for some liquid water to be available to the trees. One most direct way is to cover ground with a thick layer of mulch. However, in some previous years I did have some trees with 6-8 inches of mulch and they still did not survive. The difference this year is that I am applying both thick mulch layer and adding a moisture barrier for the needles. My hope is that the combination of both would allow survival. 

But wait, there is more.

How do I actually know if there is liquid water available to the roots? Fortunately, there are wireless sensors available these days. I did not find any examples of people using some underground sensors for gardening or tree-growing over winter. I did find out that there are sensors that are used in food freezers, which indicates that they will probably work if placed in the cold soil. I purchased one such sensor called "SensorPush"

I have been testing it for a couple of weeks and so far it seems to perform well. The basic concept of the experiment is very simple - place a sensor at the level of the feeder roots and see if temperature is anywhere close to the water melting point. I dug a hole about 6 inches deep next to one of the sequoias and placed there a SensorPush, which I put in three enclosed plastic bags to prevent exposing it to open water. Filled the hole with soil on top of the sensor.

I added another 8 inches of mulch on top of the filled hole and marked location of the sensor with an old arrow.

Next step was a familiar teepee with wrapping of the needles in fabric and plastic around the frame. And another 6 inch of mulch on top and around the base of the pyramid:

Here are the results of the first two weeks of sensor measurements:

It is worth mentioning that the lowest temperature so far was the night from Nov 22 to Nov 23, 20F. There was a delay of almost 24 hours for the ground temperature to reach its lowest value of 45.3F during the night of Nov 24. The 25 degree difference is substantial. It is clear that the ground gives off immense amount of heat at this time. How this will continue during the winter months will be interesting to observe.

But that's not all. To push the experiment even further I added a controlled variable in the way of an underground heating wire. The SensorPush sensor is actually lying on top of a section of this wire. The wire is a 6 foot long loop that goes around this sequoia seedling at the depth of 6 inches. If and when the temperature drops below freezing I intend to conduct some power injections to see the effect on the soil temperature. Depending on the outcome of these experiments, it would not be too difficult to install underground wires for other trees, but the time will tell if this is needed or if it's effective.

Iowa Derecho

Last month we all learned a new word here in Iowa. Derecho. 

Frankly, I have not heard that word before though I have lived in the area over a quarter of a century. I have heard many natives saying the same thing. It’s definitely an extremely rare phenomenon that I hope will not happen again for the next few hundred or thousand years over the sequoia hill. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho

As it happened, my sequoia experiment was about 7-10 miles from the epicenter of the derecho. While the worst of the damage came from the winds above 120 mph (200 km/h) our area was mostly greeted with roughly 100 mph (160 km/h) straight wind. The epicenter or I guess, “epiline”, of the storm removed over half of all trees, we have lost probably around a quarter. The most affected trees in our area were those in 40-80 year old range. The oldest and largest trees over 100 years old withstood the wind with some large branches lost. My neighbor’s tree is a 100+ ft (30+ m) extremely thick (about 5ft/1.5m diameter) oak that had surprisingly little damage. Younger 2-15 year old trees were able to bend, sometimes nearly to the ground and survive because of that. One tree on my land got bent and stuck:

Anything in between 15 and 40 year old was a coin toss. I have about a dozen 50-80 year old oaks, hickories and elms  all around 80-100ft (~30m) tall. Only one such oak was completely destroyed snapping clean about half way along the trunk  and losing the entire crown. 

All trees lost some branches including massive major ones but overall we got “lucky” compared to the unbelievable scenes just down the road from us. Many areas have no intact trees above 20-30ft tall left, some completely torn out of the ground with immense root balls sticking up to the house roofs and some sheered off with mangled splintered trunks sticking out of the soil.

Amazingly, no losses to the sequoias or any other seedlings on my tree farm. Several cages were mangled by downed smaller trees and flying giant branches but after digging the seedlings from under the debris there was no significant damage to speak of to the trees themselves. 

One young spruce was removed from the ground along with its rootball by a branch that was dragged along its location but I stuck it back into the hole and it may still survive. Most potential damage is to the sequoia and other seedlings root balls as the trees were pressed against the ground practically 90 degrees from their normal orientation and then repeated many times over the 15-20 minute period of the storm. That action wiggled some of them out of the soil. I pressed them back into the ground and filled in a bit with some dirt and small leaves and debris that thickly covered the entire area. Now almost a month after the event I do not see any negative effects although I thought such a disturbance to the root system can’t be good to their wellbeing. But I have to say that the growth since the derecho continued unabated with some sequoias posting most excellent progress. This statement applies to the sequoias of all ages and varieties, regular green and the hardy blue ones. 

Another fairly unusual phenomenon in progress is a severe drought that’s going on in the area. The humidity levels were consistently much lower than normal. High humidity in late summer is associated with fungus growth on sequoias. Not this year. There are no visible signs of the fungus except a couple of suspected small spots. Not to give fungi any chance all sequoias were treated with chlorothalonil three times since the start of the season, last time yesterday. Most of the trees look very healthy.

This is not to say that there were no casualties this summer. Several sequoias, both from the last fall and this spring planting, perished for one reason or another. These reasons are not entirely understood as some just started turning brown, some turning yellow and almost white, some just desiccating and turning thinner till complete death. A few had a malformed growth on the top where needles start bending and thickening making them look like an ugly light green flower preventing the lead to continue upward growth. 

Some have died but some have overcame that condition and a new side branch was able to grow through this and start a new lead. A couple are still recovering from that condition. 

The year old and this year germinated seedlings in containers are doing reasonably well as well. The biggest problem with them is desiccation due to lack of rain and the high temperatures. I failed to water them in time several times and lost a few because of that as containers got very light. 

Speaking about watering, I have watered a few sequoias with very generous amount of water through the entire season. I could not do it to all sequoias but to one selected patch that was closest to the water faucet. Surprisingly two younger sequoias on that patch died but the rest grew extremely well. One in particular, of a green variety, is the healthiest sequoia with great shape that I have ever seen in my experiments or elsewhere in the natural habitat. It’s definitely the largest sequoia by volume at present, though not the tallest. Several hardy blue varieties are taller due to a healthy growth this season, but none look as full as this green one. 

Quick update on color

Here is a picture showing two varieties of sequoia side by side. 

The two on the left are standard sequoiadendron from seeds. The one on the right is “exceptionally blue” clone from Crowfoot Nursery. The difference in color is pretty striking. 

2020 growing season begins

It has been a long time since the last update. This past winter has not been nearly as bad as the previous one but several sequoias still perished.

The two largest and oldest sequoias suffered opposite fates. One emerged unscathed nice and green with a bunch of new growth as of May 23 while the other one is completely dead.

Previous leader #222 is completely dead with no signs of new green well into June:

This past winter it was surrounded by a foam cylinder but without the top. The idea was to protect it against the direct wind and allow snow and rain to go directly on the tree. Did not work. 

The second leader #220 faired much better but it was heavily protected by Lutrasil fabric layer and by a complete foam cone

#220 is about 20 inches tall with vigorous new green growth throughout the entire volume.

There are four more sequoias that spent second winter planted in the ground, but they have been severely underdeveloped over last two years. One reached the height of over 40 inches at one point but was completely destroyed and started re-growing from practically zero height. This winter it as once again seriously damaged but a few new green shoots appeared in the late spring:

Two very small sequoias from 2016 are still alive but do not exceed 4 inches:

One of the 2016 germinations trees was doing moderately well but the growth has never kicked in like most normally developing trees. #267 stands at about  10 inches tall:

This wraps ups all the sequoia trees that were germinated here in Iowa and spent the last winter planted in ground. 

Three hardy hybrids from Crowfoot Nursery in Oregon were planted in the ground and all were protected by foam. Two of them were Hazel Smith and one was Glaucum. All three survived with varying degree of success. 

The worst is a Hazel Smith that was kept under one very large foam covering along with two other sequoias - Glaucum hybrid and a regular germinated sequoia. The regular one died. The Glaucum one is doing well.

HS in bad shape but there is one good new shoot:

Glaucum is not big but has plenty of new green growth:

The remaining hardy hybrid was planted in a different location and is doing fine. It was one of the smaller HS but surprisingly it did well:

Another patch of sequoias was planted together consisting of only purchased sequoias from a different nursery in Oregon. They were not hardy hybrids but rather normal green giant sequoias. They were all kept under a layer of Lutrasil and a foam cone above. Out of four planted three survived with minimal damage and one died. all survivors look approximately the same:

This wraps up the list of the sequoias that spent the last winter outside in the ground.

This spring the rest of the sequoias were planted in the ground except the seedling germinated in the Fall of 2019 and some 2018.

Here is an example of a HS sequoia planted in this recent batch:

In total there are:

In ground Hardy Hybrids (Hazel Smith, Exceptionally Blue and Glaucum) - 21

In ground Germinated in Iowa regular 2014-2018 - 8

In ground Oregon regular 2016 - 7

Seedlings 2018 in pots - 6

Seedlings 2019 in pots - 33