Habitat Restoration at High Ground
Organics
High Ground Organics owns 38.5 acres bordering the wetlands of Harkins Slough in Watsonville. The half of High Ground's farm that slopes down to the slough is in a conservation easement, protecting it in perpetuity from development or farming activity of any kind. This highly degraded and impacted land is being restored for native habitat by the intensive efforts of restorationist Laura Kummerer, assisted by grants from NRCS (the Natural Resources Conservation Service). Below are some of Laura's articles, written for our CSA newsletter, concerning the restoration project. Laura often hosts volunteer work parties, which we will post here periodically.
Restoration Saturdays, Winter 2009
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Laura Kummerer's Articles
Return of the Sunflowers, August 19, 2009 High Ground Organics’ Coastal Prairie Restoration Project, 2009 Update
As the depth of summer descends on the coastal prairie restoration project at High Ground Organics Farm, the grassland is aglow with blooms of millions of short stature, yellowish orange sunflowers. These blooms are a vibrant indicator of the transformation that is occurring in the grassland in response to our third season of restoration efforts. These cheery sunflowers have been absent from the grassland for almost 15 years. But this summer, they are growing in abundant puddles brightening areas that had been blanketed with layers of invasive weeds when we began the project. On a hot day, the resins on the leaves of these little plants cloak the grassland in a smell of pine sap and fresh green growth. The smell fills me with tangible hope that these pioneer plants are opening the way for the return of a healthy grassland ecosystem.
We have approached the restoration of this grassland in a multi-leveled way. As many of you know, we began a rotational grazing regime out here three years ago with the goal of re-introducing the large animal disturbance that native grasslands evolved with. This winter we also enacted a large scale planting and seeding project which imbued two acres of the grassland with 8,000 seedlings and 25 different species of grasses, sedges, rushes and wildflowers. The re-planting has allowed us to bring back species to the grassland that had been lost over the years of intensive human management. The grazing, on the other hand, is giving us a chance to clear away the weeds so that the land can reveal itself. The grazers’ job has been to eat the proliferation of invasive plants and decrease the deep layers of “thatch” that have built up across the grassland. This thatch was 2 feet deep in some places, forming a blanket so thick that it kept light from reaching the soil surface. This made it impossible for annual wildflowers, such as the little sunflower, to germinate. Each year the grazing regime has decreased the amount of thatch and has left bare areas of soil that have become perfect nurseries for the sunflowers.
The sunflowers abloom on the grassland have their own story to tell. There are three different types of sunflowers shimmering in the restoration area this year. The most prolific is the Coast Tarweed (Hemizonia corymbosa) along with a few smatterings of the Hayfield Tarweed (Hemizonia congesta ssp. luzulifolia), followed by a growing colony of the Santa Cruz Tarplant (Holocarpha macradenia). As their names suggest, all of these sunflowers are in the tarweed tribe named for the sticky resin that exudes from their stems and leaves to minimize water loss in the hot summer and to protect them from predation. If you look closely at an individual flower head of these little blooms, you will see that it is complex. Like the showy garden-variety sunflower, that produces the seeds we eat, the individual flower head is not just one flower, but is composed of a composite of tiny flowers. The inner “face” of the garden sunflower is actually made of hundreds of tiny flowers called disk flowers. The yellow outer “petals” that surround the center “face” are each a flower themselves called the ray flowers.
The importance of the unabashed blooms of sunflowers across the grassland is even more striking due to the fact that one of the species of sunflowers, the Santa Cruz Tarplant, is on the verge of extinction. This sunflower species has been severely impacted by development and the proliferation of invasive weeds. It has dwindled to just twelve small colonies that remain in small pocket grasslands in Santa Cruz and Contra Costa Counties. Upon the initiation of this project, it was thought that the colony on our grassland had disappeared completely because it had not been observed since 1990. But in 2006, when we were conducting our plant inventory of the site, we found 115 straggly Santa Cruz Tarplant’s growing in a refuge of thin soils on the far side of the restoration project. This plant needs disturbance and soil compaction to thrive and this year it has responded positively to our restoration efforts. The population has hit its highest number in eighteen years, with over 200 robust plants laden with seed for the future.
As summer comes to an end and all of the species of sunflowers on the grassland go to seed, I know that we are one step closer to reviving the endangered sunflower and in turn bringing back a healthy grassland ecosystem composed of a matrix of annual wildflowers, perennial bunch grasses and a complex web of insects, birds and mammals.
Hope in the Wild Seeds, November 3, 2008 As I enter into the third year of restoring the damaged grassland on High Ground Organics’ Conservation Easement, I am surrounded by seed. Bags upon bags of native grass and wildflower seed are crowding every empty corner of my living space. Fifty gallon drums of seed stalks are stashed in to any dry, rodent free niche I can find on the farm. I feel like an acorn woodpecker carefully stowing away my precious harvest in a granary tree for lean times. Every time I walk by one of my “granaries”, I am filled ith hope in the transformative power of these bags bulging with the promise of new life.
These seeds are a culmination of two years of work. Small quantities of them were harvested at the beginning of this project from the few remnant native bunch grass and wildflower stands left around the Watsonville Slough system. They were then grown up to seedlings in the greenhouse and planted and tended in farm beds on the edge of the farm. We have harvested from them for the last two years and have turned the handful of seeds we started with into bushels of them. You may wonder why we went to all of this trouble for our seed when native grass seed can be easily purchased in a seed catalogue. Well, just as the CSA provides local produce that is grown in balance with the cycles, nutrients and soils of a local ecosystem, these locally collected native grass seeds have the genetic coding that evolved with the unique ecological processes of the Watsonville Slough system. We want to preserve the seeds of this region since they are uniquely adapted to the cycles of this area rather than buy seed that evolved to live with the cycles of the Central Valley or elsewhere.
I wonder if the acorn woodpecker enjoys harvesting and admiring the beauty of seeds as much as I do. The sensual process of gathering seed by hand is one of the most calming and meditative activities I know. When you collect seed time slows down and you get to know the plant you are collecting from in an intimate way. You get to really see the soft grey fuzz on the underside of the Blue Wild Rye leaves. You get to run your fingers up the tall, towering stalk of this bunch grass and feel the seeds release themselves into your collection basket. Each seed looks, feels and ripens differently. When you harvest you get to recognize these differences in your gut.
The Meadow Barley seed for example doesn’t ripen all at once. It ripens from the top down. So when you harvest you must make many passes. Sometimes it takes a month or more for every seed on the plant to be ready to be pinched off and put in your collection basket. The beautiful Purple Needle grass is the opposite. It can go from immature to fully ripe and falling off its stem within three days if there is a heat spell. Although the timing of harvest is tricky, the seed you do catch is quite beautiful. It is covered with the softest coat of velvety hairs which help to keep it from desiccating in the hot, California sun. If I was a microscopic insect I would pick the plush Purple Needle Grass seed to bed down on over any other. The California Oat Grass seed has another strategy for sending its smooth and delicate seed into the world. It folds its most viable seed between its stem and its leaf blade. In early summer the stems fall off the plant, but the seed is not released until the winter rains. You harvest the seed from this mounding bunch grass by raking up the dried stems that have fallen.
As I write this article the first rains of the season are falling outside. The rains are the call that the land is ripe to receive the beautiful array of seed that I have stashed away in my “granaries”. In a few days this seed will be thrown back out into the wild, where hundreds of years ago it thrived. Although I make it sound haphazard, we are not quite just throwing the seed to the winds. These seeds will be sown into the land that we have been clearing of weeds and thatch over the past two years with our rotational grazing and hand weeding program. The weeds that inevitably will come as the winter rains continue will be mowed and kept short for the next two years to give the slower growing native grass seedlings the time to take up their space once again.
This winter I hope these wild seeds will find fertile soil and flourish in their new/old home. Along with sowing seeds, we will be planting 7,000 sedges, grasses, rushes and wildflowers that were grown from tiny seeds in our greenhouse. It will take a multitude of hands to bring this planting to life during the nourishing rains of winter.
Directions to High Ground Organics
From the South:
From the North: Take Hwy 1 south to the Hwy 152 Watsonville exit. Turn right at the light onto Green Valley Rd. Follow this across the freeway, past the new High School, to where the road ends. Take the last dirt road on your left, immediately before the closed gate.