Project Status

Lessons Learned

  1. Douglas Firs do better in nearly full sun, but Sitka Spruce, Western Hemlock, and Western Red Cedar prefer partial shade.

  2. While it would be nice to design the kickoff as a group event where all the volunteers come to a central site like Magnuson Park would be a great way to establish a sense of group identity and a shared community mission. I would like to try this for the next cohort, but it was not possible this year due to COVID-19. However, buying a dump truck load of soil and requiring people to come to a central site to take home 500 pounds of soil is impractical for many people, and likely to be a bottleneck due to the time and effort to shovel the soil up into cars and trucks. Perhaps I will try to do a hybrid event where volunteer gardeners come to a central site to learn potting techniques and other information, receive their plants and pots, and then have just the soil delivered by other volunteers with pickup trucks.

  3. It is important to impress on people that all the baby seedlings need to be potted within a couple of days, and to keep on top of watering them.

  4. A 1/4 ton pickup truck with a full sized bed will fit 200 potted seedlings in the 4 inch by 4 inch by 10 inch tall pots. They did not dry out on the 60 mile trip to the site, though it was cool and cloudy, and a warm sunny day could create conditions for wind drying the tree needles during the trip.