Planting, planting and more planting

Planting, the most important thing we do, but by the end, the crews least favorite thing to do. That may be a generalization, but by the time planting season was over I was beyond happy to not have to plant any more trees! Our schedule got a little screwed up because of our trip to New York for Sandy Relief. We didn't start planting until the end of January. Our first few sites were tucked away on the Big Quilcene River, mostly under plantings in easy to dig soil. We had to plant a lot of potted stock, especially when planting for the Hood Canal Salmon Enhancement Group, which adds an extra bit of work in depotting the plants. Planting did, however provide an opportunity for us to talk while working. We were no longer using brush cutters and DR mowers so there was no need for ear plugs. We would play a few verbal games to help the time go by faster.
February was dedicated to our biggest planting site of the year, Donovan Creek. We filled in some plants at Lower Donovan Creek for a week. During that week we really got into the swing of things. We even managed to talk Jason into bringing us some augers to help increase production! With those augers we were tree planting machines! Once we finished planting lower Donovan creek we moved on to Upper Donovan Creek and planted both sides of the creek that week. Unfortunately we forgot to save some plants for one corner of the site and had to dig up some of the conifers we planted. Regardless, we had both banks planted and ready for tubing.

best stay away!

liking the rain

auger, best tool ever

After Donovan Creek we had a few plantings here and there that were small CREP sites or properties next to important watersheds. We did some underplanting for Hood Canal along the Big Quil and replaced some dead trees at snow creek and some filler plantings with Deborah for DNR.
There were 2 other major planting sites on our calendar: Rivers End with Jamestown Sklallam Tribe and Morse Creek for NOSC. The Rivers End planting was prepped by us in the beginning of the year. We had scalped the sod and their field guys had sprayed those holes. With the two augers running full time we managed to get that entire site planted in 1 day, tubed the next day and spent the next couple days filling in dead trees.

Morse Creek was on of those never ending projects. It began as an underplanting/fill in planting of about 500 plants and turned into a few thousand (okay, maybe only 1500). Regardless, the digging was not easy (it was super rocky) and there was a lot of rain. Part of what made this project unending is plants kept showing up at this site that weren't on the planting list. It was confusing and annoying, but we just kept planting. We finally finished planting and tubing this site a few days ago.