Transcript
(bright music)
- Hi, I'm Steve Fitzgerald.
I'm the extension silviculture specialist
and also director of the
College of Forestry Research Forest.
So when we manage forests
we often kind of create disturbances.
It could be a clearcut, maybe
some smaller disturbances
like a small patch clearcut.
But those open conditions
provide great habitat
for encouraging what we call
pollinator plant species
that are important for
bees and other pollinators.
So when we plant trees
the pollinator habitat
doesn't last very long
as those trees grow and close in.
But there are places
where pollinator habitat
can be more permanent
or last a longer period of time.
And one of those is on
landings and skid trails.
And when I talk about
landings, I mean log landings,
where, in the harvest process,
logs are brought up into
a fairly large area.
And that can create a really great habitat
for pollinators because it's open.
And that habitat can
either seed in naturally
or you can seed or plant
various pollinating plants
in and around a landing
or along a skid trail.
So we're on a log landing right now.
And here's a perfect example behind me
of some native plants that have seeded in
and are growing and
providing pollinator habitat.
Everything from ceanothus
and willow, to oceanspray
and to flowering currant, cherry,
a whole host of other species.
And it's all free.
However, you can also enhance it,
take an active approach
in enhancing pollinator
habitat on landings
and skid trails just by seeding
or planting various species.
And if you do it very soon after a harvest
when the ground is freshly disturbed,
that's the best time
to actually do a seeding
of pollinating plants.
One of the things you need to consider
in kind of helping your pollinator plants
is they might need some maintenance
and sometimes invasive
plants like this blackberry
can outcompete your pollinating plant.
So you may have to do some
treatment here to rid the area
of blackberries so that your pollinators
have plenty of room to grow.
Sometimes even our native
shrubs, pollinating shrubs
need a little help.
If you look at this shrub behind me,
it's getting older, decadent,
producing less flowers
than it it typically would.
And what you can do to rejuvenate
them is actually cut them
with a chainsaw or with a weed whacker.
And what that does is
it enhances the sprouting that will occur
and then the flowering
that will come after that.
And thinking about
enhancing pollinator habitat
on your property, one of the
things you want to think about
is how can you provide flowering resources
that span the growing season.
So we know we have
plants that flower early
and others that flower late.
In this case, we have a native willow
to my far left here that
flowers in April, very early.
And then right here,
right next to me is a oceanspray
that flowers later in the summer.
(bright music)
This video describes how to add bee habitat to existing roads, skid trails and landings on your forest.
This piece is part of the collection
Bees in the woods
