2019 season opening

Say what? Season opening in June? Yes, this update has little to do with typical measuring of the growth and beautiful pictures of giant sequoias. Instead, it’s the next chapter in the mighty war of sequoias in Zone 5.

There were total of about 20 GS outside for the past winter. Two normal trees, about 2-3ft tall, two bush-like survivors from previous winters and the rest all very small seedlings up to 8-9 inches tall. All seedlings and the two “bushes” were kept under styrofoam thermal cones. The two real trees had a burlap layer outside of the wire fence and another layer of highly reflective plastic. There was a decent amount snow this past winter with about 2/3rd of the tree height covered by it by the middle of the winter.

This winter was exceptionally cold and long. Temperatures dipped to -30F (-34C). With the windchill temperatures were reported to be below -50F (-45C). Average minimal temperature for January 2019 was an incredible -20F (-29C). This means not only that it got extremely cold several times, it stayed cold all January.

It got a little better in February but It was still -20C several times and then in March it got to -22C yet again. Majority of April was below freezing. Apple and cherry trees bloomed three weeks later than usual. This winter was hell for people and sequoias alike.

One of the older trees completely died:

By middle May there were no traces of green.

The second and largest tree did not die completely but it was severely decimated except for a few branches at the very bottom:

#220 after 2019 winter

Number 220 will most likely become another bush-like sequoia.

All "giant sequoias bushes" that were  covered with styrofoam survived without any visible problems. They are beginning to produce new shoots that perhaps will lead to the new leads. However, they all look like more or less like #220 above.

Several Hazel Smiths that were purchased in December 2018 are sitting in pots:

An experiment I would like to conduct for next winter is to build a large styrofoam cone that would cover larger trees.

Mid winter update 2019

Another winter, another trial by fire, err cold.

Temperatures dropped to negative 35C with strong wind. Windchills were reported to negative 45C. How can anything survive here?

I am glad that in addition to sequoias I now have a full complement of hardy conifers in the park. It's possible that the sequoia seedling will survive THIS winter because they were well protected but another winter like that when they are 6-10 foot tall and I am pretty sure they will die. Short of building a dome, there is no way Giant Sequoias can stand -45C windchill.

All things considered, this recent episode was not bad. Since the death of all tall sequoias last winter, the two 2-3 footers were wrapped pretty well with burlap and even some Reflectix material (bubble wrap with aluminum film). There was also over a foot of snow on the ground, plus the day before temperatures started plunging, I added even more fluffy light snow on top of the trees:

The seedlings were almost completely buried:

Back in the warmth of the house, I now have a few Hazel Smith samples. I was advised by one of my followers from Finland about the existence of Crowfoot Nursery on Oregon. Their product list includes quite a few grafted liners of various SGs variants, including the hardiest of them all - Hazel Smith:

I must say, the service was excellent. All trees came in top shape. Packaging was simply amazing.

All grafted seedling are doing well sitting in a protective cage:

A couple dozen 2018 germinated small seedlings are still doing fine in their starter containers. I moved half a dozen into larger, 1 quart (1L) containers. There is still quite a few regular 12-18" California seedlings but I am not sure what to do with them long term yet. They proved to be completely unacclimated to the life in Iowa.

Perhaps I will try my own grafting with them if Hazel Smiths survive in the next couple of years.

Watering the sequoias

Sequoia and Bitcoin 5 Year Update 2018

In October of 2013 I took a picture of a newly born sequoia from seed and Bitcoin:

October 2013 post

There were many twists and turns in the 5 years past. Both sequoias and Bitcoin experienced slow and steady growth, followed by a meteoric rise in 2017. Only to come crashing down in the winter of 2018.

And now,

Sequoia:

#220 2 feet tall, Oct 2018. 5 years old.

Bitcoin:

Both grew, both still alive, both significantly off their stronger days. #220 was a slow grower, kept in a container for two years longer than the larger and now dead siblings. The tallest trees from the original 2013 batch reached almost 5 feet in height while #220 today is just barely above 2 feet. What it lacks in height it gains in very healthy green needles with no sign of fungi or other damage.

Will take another picture and comparison in 5 years. It's a silly comparison but why not?

Iowa Sequoia Farm Fall Colors

Here is a short video clip from the farm.

Reset number 2. Map V.4

This is the second major reset since the beginning of the project in 2012.

Of course I knew that it would not be easy to grow a giant sequoia in Zone 5, so all is good. The first reset happened early on in the endeavor when I realized that just a few seeds are not going to grow me a sequoia here in Iowa. At that time I ordered 1 oz of seeds, which was about 6,000 of them. I started germinating batches of several hundred at a time pushing a few dozen green sequoias into the wild every spring.

The project was going okay and the first three winters were unusually warm for Iowa. The last winter was not extraordinarily cold but there was a cold spell for 2-3 days that pushed the temperatures below -40C with strong winds. The trees that were kept under the foam cones did fine but almost all bigger trees that were uncovered perished. Below is an account of the survivors from the Zone 5 wrath and more importantly a new plan to get the trees established in this hostile land.

If it were a total loss, meaning all 100% of sequoias uncovered by foam cones dead, then I would have to call defeat. It was not the case, however. Several sequoias survived. They were badly damaged but still living. The reason conifers die is because they keep needles green through the worst of the low temperatures and must pump water. Once they are unable to pump enough water they desiccate and die.

Eastern Iowa is half way between Missouri and Minnesota in Zone 5A, transitioning to Zone 5B over last quarter century. It's highly likely that the global warming will continue over next 25-100 years.  This means that within my expected lifespan of additional 8900 days (give or take) Zone 5B is going to move up the state to the North and Zone 6 will get a hold of the area where this sequoia project is unfolding. If I take care of the trees over next few years getting them ready for what's coming for them may just work. Barely, but it might. Kind of DARPA-ish, am I right? :D

Without any further ado, the survivors!

Wham wham wham. First, the most viable survivors that were actually under the foam. And next I will show what actual survivors look like.

#220

#220 Fall 2018. Approximately 30 inches

#207

#207 Fall 2018. Approximately 24 inches

Now onto the "real" survivors.
#214

#222

As can be seen on these last two photos, the damage was severe. The hope for these two lies with #207. By the start of the 2018 season it looked approximately like #222 is looking today. It bounced back during 2018 season and is now looking like a real tree again. #220 is largest and healthiest looking of all of them but that does not mean much. It has not spent a single winter without foam cones yet. This upcoming winter is going to be its first without extreme protection.

There are a couple of more survivors but they can barely be called even that. Just some minor small green needles remaining on side branches close the ground.

Now onto the bigger plan and the new reset. First, here is a top down view of the lot:

Here is an annotated version that explains rhyme and reason behind what's going on:

The outer windbreaker wall is made of mostly norway spruce. There is some green spruce on the west and south side of that outermost barrier. The trees are planted 5 feet apart. The second line of defense against the wind is arborvitae and eastern pine. There are a couple of Austrian pines in the mix as well. In general, the outer and middle windbreaker walls are separated by about 12 feet to allow mowing and passage of a tractor. The emphasis is on the northern side of the lot with somewhat less protection on the south side. The logic here is that the sequoia areas should not be shaded from the sun and should be protected against severe Iowa winter winds. Also, for that reason, south part of the windbreaker wall is made up of slower growing green spruce rather than the very fast growing norway spruce on the north.

The intent is to slowly remove inner layers of non-sequoia trees as sequoias (hopefully) mature, so that not to cause competition for light and water.

The sequoia zones marked as blue polygons are intended for dense sequoia planting, reminiscent of the pictures found in the natural habitat. The intent is to also remove weaker sequoia trees over time, leaving one or two trees per polygon area by the time they can be considered established (15-20 years). Additional zones may be added in the future in case the experiment succeeds over the next 5-10 years.

A pond was added between two sequoia zones for easy watering in case of long draught periods. A small stream was artificially created that moves the water across the lot. The roof of the pergola in the middle is made of clear plastic that collects rain water. This rain water is collected in a barrel with a spill off into the stream. A small pump moves the water from the pond up the hill into the same water barrel. Water, both from the pond and from rain, goes down the hill into the pond. About 200W solar panels were installed on the pergola roof, facing south and south-west.

Here is a perspective view of the area during preparation of the sequoia zones:

This is a look from west to east. The first sequoia zone is located in the middle of the picture and a little to the left of the stream. The second zone will be planted with sequoia seedlings approximately where the white net shade structure is in this picture. The shaded area was used to store small sequoias this past summer. Unfortunately they were mostly destroyed by some animals since there was no protective fencing around them.

Ample amounts of anti-desiccant will be applied on all trees to ensure survival. Small sequoias inside blue zones are small enough to be covered with foam cones for the upcoming winter. Surviving older sequoias will get both the polymer and burlap on the outside of the metal mesh fence.

The king is dead, long live the king

The winter took out most of the sequoias. Young and old. The larger ones that were showing promise in the spring ultimately did not recover. I removed all dead trees past weekend. The map will obviously need to be updated to reflect the new order.

The new order is, as I started describing in the last post, to build a fortification consisting of a dual windbreak lines of hardy conifer trees. Further hardening will be done through cluster planting of sequoia seedlings close to each other so that the trees closer to the middle would experience less windburn. Finally, the trees will be treated with polymer in the fashion described by Jacob from Kelly's tree farm.

Surviving ones include #207:

#220?

There are a few more that have some green growth at the bottom but all are minimal and pretty meaningless to measure at this time.

Both of the surviving trees were kept under the foam cones. However, foam protection is not the ultimate protection. All of the seedlings that were kept in the pots inside a foam protected box, all 120 of them, also perished. Wind burn and desiccation is one of the problems but root system freeze out is also deadly to sequoias. Red cedar that was kept in the same box with sequoias survived just fine.

Here is picture of the dead #33, which was the tallest tree after previous season:

And here is another strong tree from last year, #104, after it was cut down:

The pond near sequoia clusters continues to take shape. Recent rains are filling it up pretty quickly.

A shade area was set up with 25%, 40% and 50% light blocking fabric where younger sequoias will be kept through the summer. The cluster planting will happen in the fall, also under the protected structure, only for winter it will be an insulation fabric. The idea is to have insulation screen movable, so that the trees are exposed to snow and some wind but for the especially cold periods it would be moved over on top to cover the seedlings. The overarching goal is to continue training trees to Iowa winters but without killing them.

Late Spring Map version 3

It JUST got warm in Iowa.

It was still snowing last week here. The temps were oscillating around freezing point. There was not all that much rain but when it fell it was mixed with snow and sleet. There is nothing new to report about the sequoia trees from the park, since everything continues to be in a suspended state. With temperatures now moving into the low sixties it's destined to change.

With no sequoia activity it was a good time to start thinking about improving the site. Without any further delay, here is a new map, version 3. It's mostly to indicate the scope of work for the upcoming season.

Iowa Sequoia Map Version 3

This picture also shows sequoias planted in the ground (large red circles with black outline) with some hope of revival. If you remember the older maps, you will see that quite a few older sequoias are now gone.

The two major objectives for this summer is planting of the windbreaks and creating a water collection system. The windbreak is made of the the two barriers - one outside consisting of Norway spruce and White spruce; and an inner row of pines and arborvitaes. The water collection system is two-fold - ground drainage collection into a small pond and a pergola roof rain collector with a barrel of water.

Map version 3, zoomed

In case of extra water from the roof, the spill will be diverted into the pond. The roof based collector is 8x8ft. With a 2 inch of rain it will collect about 80 gallons of water. The barrel that I got is 50 gallons, so it's highly likely spills will occur. The pond will also accumulate water flowing from the hill. A drainage trench will be dug where the water flows naturally. I marked the area of flowing water last fall during heavy rains. The area around the pond, protected behind two rows of wind breaking trees will hold the main "sequoia sanctuary". I also intend to protect young sequoias with aggressive winter measures, mainly applying sealing polymer and wrapping with thermal materials till the windbreakers grow taller and sequoias had a chance to create larger root system. The other two green sequoia areas will be the places for the experiments with limiting vertical growth by cutting the leads in the fall.

Last week I purchased a total of 60 trees for the wind breakers:

They had to wait till this week for the snow to melt and the ground to finally unfreeze. Today first windbreaker trees were planted:

Moisture sealer and more windbreaks

I wish I got this knowledge 5 years ago.

I went to look at more windbreaker trees this week to Kelly Tree farm. While we were walking between the rows of seedlings I noticed that some were colored with some kind of paint. I asked the owner what it was. He revealed to me that in order to preserve young conifers from desiccation he applies some moisture sealer in late fall. Although strictly speaking it was not the real anti-desiccant but apparently it worked well:

Needlehold for freshly cut trees.

Once I learned that this was a thing, I found several anti-desiccants but they were more expensive than this. Link to buy. Actually ordered from here.

For longer term protection I am going to plant real windbreaks this year. The outer perimeter with arborvitae and the inner perimeter with norway and white spruce. I will also plant a few eastern pines between sequoia patches to further protect younger seedlings. 

New year, new ideas 2018

It is still two months before the start of the growing season for Iowa sequoias. This winter inflicted yet another massive blow to the non-native trees. Several leaders are dead or nearly dead at this time. Several dozen 1-2 year seedlings were frozen out and are completely brown. 

#255 died after winter 2017/18 exposure

But not all hope is lost. Most of the 5 year olds still have green branches at the base. Many younger seedlings covered with foam cones are looking fine. A detailed report will be published later as the spring unfolds.

Most of this post is about the findings and ideas based on the trip to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park.

I traveled to these two parks located reasonably close to each other in the early spring of 2018. Unlike most people in the park who were looking at the largest specimens, I was seeking out the very youngest and the ones with visible damage. I was looking for examples of how they grow in their natural habitat. Here is what I learned and ideas that I am planing to implement on my Iowa plantation.

First of all, even here in California there were many damaged and dead sequoias aged between two and ten years old. I have not seen any dead sequoias older than 15. There was one pretty heavily damaged sequoia aged probably around 15-20 years on Stanford University campus but I don’t believe it was near its death. 

Giant sequoias on Stanford University campus, March 2018. Some visible damage.

That was by far the worst I have seen out of dozens "young" but established sequoias in the 15-50 year range. I can't quite tell the age of older sequoias but there were definitely no visibly damaged sequoias older than that.

There were plenty of other species of conifers of all ages completely dead, so giant sequoias were definitely a standout as in once they get stablished they tend to survive better than other trees. The reasons for other conifer deaths were cited as drought and insect damage.

One conclusion from this first observation relevant to my case is that the longer trees survive the better chance they have to establish. It's not an earth-shattering observation of course, but keeping them protected more aggressively over the first ten years still makes sense. Second conclusion is that it may make sense to limit their vertical growth for the first 10 years to allow heavier protection. I can not keep them "under a blanket" for 30 years but perhaps I can for the first 10, given I continue some vertical trimming. So far the best preserved sequoia is the one that lost 80% of the trunk last winter and re-grew decent volume during last growing season:

#207 March 2018. Lost major volume during 2016/17 winter but recovered in 2017. Minimal damage during 2017/18 winter after being kept under foam cone.

I might as well start forcing them to lose the height in a more manageable fashion. I will set up several test cases with varying amount of trimming ahead of the next winter.

Second observation from the Sequoia National Park trip was that although there were several seedlings and saplings standing alone, vast majority of the youngsters were encountered in patches of dozen or so. In those patches dead trees were seen on the edges. It is hard to make any conclusion as to why they get damaged, being so close to other normally looking trees:

36.7507 -118.9775 (36°45'02.5"N 118°58'39.0"W)

 Kings Canyon Park near General Grant Tree

Patch as observed from the trail:

Practically all patches had trees of different ages, which was surprising to me. I would think that if the conditions were favorable for germination one year, all seeds would germinate then, not over the period of several years. Apparently I was wrong:

Two 4-5 year old sequoias with one 2-3 year old next to them.

This sighting was pretty typical, where a mix of young but clearly differently aged sequoias stood together. This was quite a stark sighting because most of the forrest floor is not covered with young sequoias, but where patches occurred they had a mix of ages.

A conclusion that I am making for my experiment is that perhaps sequoias benefit from close proximity of other young trees and perhaps even from the fact that they are of different age. One idea is that they protect each other from the natural elements. This spring I will plant several younger seedlings next to the already planted older ones, creating artificial patches.

A pattern that I was aware previously but which was also standing out was that the patches were located next to the streams.

End of 2017 growing period

Another year is over. 2017 was by far the slowest growth year for the older sequoias and somewhat slower for younger sequoias. 

The median growth across all thirty tracked trees was 5 inches. Three out of 2016 top five perished. Previous giants #38 (50in), #31 (44in) and #72 (39in) have all since been removed. The longest height addition was with #212 - 11 inches. The highest tree is also the longest surviving, #33 reached 54 inches. The strongest overall tree with the largest volume of needles is #104, standing at 47.5 inches. It shows significant amount of damage in the middle part that happened at the end of summer 2016, but it recovered extraordinarily well. The healthiest tree with minimal amount of damaged branches is #212 standing at 47 inches. The volume of branches and needles is not as great as #104 but it managed to preserve practically all branches since birth. The highest #33 has not been able to recover completely this summer. It has significant part of the trunk void of growing branches. 

Several five year old trees survived after loosing about half of the leading trunk over the last winter but failed to gain substantial height since spring. #63 lost 13 inches as compared to the previous fall while #39 almost recovered but not quite, standing 3 inches below last year finish. One strong 4 year old tree #207 also grew reasonably well but after all it lost about 3 inches. All these three trees look similar with many lower branches attempting to recover, giving the trees appearance of a bush. Only one, #39 has a distinct lead, while the other two are completely random.

Here is top 20 trees, sorted by height, starting from five year old #33 at 54 inches and rounding up the list #261, a 2 year old seedling standing at 12 inches.

#33

#33, 5 year old. 54 inches

#104

#104, 5 years old, 47.5 inches

#212

#212, 4 years old, 47 inches

#118

#118, 5 years old, 36 inches

#112

#112, 5 years old, 33 inches

#214

#214, 4 years old, 32 inches

#208

#71

#71, 5 years old, 29 inches

#65

#65, 5 years old, 29 inches

#215

#215, 4 years old, 27 inches

#221

#221, 4 years old, 27 inches

#222

#222, 4 years old, 23 inches

#39

#39, 5 years old, 19 inches

#219

#219, 4 years old, 18 inches

#63

#63, 5 years old, 16 inches

#207

#207, 4 years old, 15 inches

#255

#255, 2 years old, 14 inches

#220

#220, 4 years old, 14 inches

#256

#256, 2 years old, 13 inches

#261

#261, 2 years old, 12 inches

There are also a little over 100 new fall 2016 - winter 2017 germinated seedlings that are currently not being tracked for height.

2016 seedlings approaching 1 year old. They vary from 2 to 5 inches.

These new seedlings have been doing exceptionally well till very recently. In the last few weeks many of them started to have purple disease that is killing lower branches and needles. 

Several first year seedlings were planted in the ground this fall. The vast majority of these will spend the winter in a cold box, protected from all sides from the elements.