Dark Soil Light Wood Saddleback — an Outdoor Classroom wildlife habitat installation

Apr 212017

Dark Soil Light Wood Saddleback is an Outdoor Classroom wildlife habitat installation at the Laguna Foundation‘s Laguna Environmental Center, or LEC, located at 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, California, 95401. Date: February 23, 2017. School: Orchard View School, Sebastopol, California. Teacher: Sunny Galbraith. Me: Tony McGuigan, from Spore Lore.

Dark Soil Light Wood Saddleback (now that’s a name!) hereinafter “Saddleback” installation.

The Plan, from 2 months before the project. Name change was inevitable; the students had not been consulted. Plan is North View. Our project, Saddleback, is under East Log and the mounding of soil/rock/plants between the two logs.

In a nutshell, Saddleback is a wildlife habitat installation using a large trunk section to shelter an underground tunnel that leads to a rock outcropping and the surface.

Dark Soil Light Wood Saddleback — The Before. North east view. February in Sonoma County means mustard! Note the swath of vibrant yellow mustard in the lush grass-happy cow pasture beyond the Laguna Environmental Center’s fenceline. The line of trees on the pasture’s north border is Irwin Creek.

Prep — 3 Months Before Installation

Saddleback is a sister habitat to a previous outdoor classroom wildlife habitat installation: Twisted North Mound. In foreground, a student removes clay soil from under East Log to build the soil mound behind him. The trench was then filled with woodchips for easy removal when East Log’s habitat is created (beats digging out clay soil!).

Prep — Installation Day — Before Students Arrive

Turkey tail fungus on the oak trunk of West Log.

Turkey Tail fungus.

Meadow barley (Hordeum brachyantherum) plugs that will be used for the project. These plugs are leftovers in the Nursery; their survival rate will be poor. But, some may live to thrive in the habitat.

A plug of meadow barley. Note the moss “weed”.

Scraping away woodchips from under the East Log. See “Prep — 3 Months Before Installation“, above. Note the earthworm at my fingertips.

Soil critters thriving in the moist decaying woodchips under (shaded from sun) in the previously made trench.

Scraping away woodchips to preserve their integrity. We want to keep the soil we move from mixing with the woodchips.

Shading the woodchip pile with landscape cloth to minimize soil microbe/fungus fatality. The partially broken down woodchips are richly impregnated with decomposers, that is, microbes and fungus and arthropods and gastropods that want to eat the woodchips, thrive in them. Would be a shame to kill off such biota while installing a habitat. The opaque landscape cloth will keep harsh sunlight from the woodchip dwellers.

Taking shape. The trench under East Log is deepened. Soil in the tub, from the trench, will be added to Saddleback when the meadow barley is planted.

Shopping for something organic, something ALIVE! at the Habitat Resource Pile (an old woodchip pile with buried treasures). Note the middle stump, adjacent to the eaten out stump in the foreground — it has lived inside a large woodchip for over 3 years, always covered by chips. Now it is ripe to pick and place in a wildlife habitat. The stump itself is alive — it is impregnated with Life.

Prying Middle Stump (think Middle Earth) from the Habitat Garden’s woodchip pile. Note the dark richness of its bed — Are these woodchips are is this soil?!

Habitat it and they will come! Lots of Life, critters seen and unseen, fungi, stored water and its biome.

Stored in a tub, the precious stump is shaded in a plastic barrel. The stump’s transfer to the habitat will be in a few hours.

Harvesting compost from Compost Cricket Corral, as mentioned in my last post, Centipede Tunnel Perch.

Prep. Clockwise from foreground: 4-15 gallon pots filled with Nursery-discarded potting soil (free!), West Log, Cold Water Canyon rock slabs (standing and on garden cart), Middle Stump in white plastic shaded bin, plants (behind East Log in shade), black plastic bin of topsoil from East Log trench, tunnel of corrugated perforated habitated (holes cut in for critter entrance/exit) 6″ ABS, palm fronds, black landscape cloth covered mound of woodchips, wheelbarrow (rusty) of compost with an algae covered log, wheelbarrow (blue) of compost.

A bonus gift! We have 5 juncus Juncus patens to plant. Juncus, a reed, loves water; their presence indicates year-round water.

Installation — Dark Soil Light Wood Saddleback

Students have arrived and gather woodchips that will be used to finish the project.

In goes the tunnel, a custom designed critter tunnel, “Each Exit/Entrance is about 6-8″ long and 2″ wide (2 corrugation trenches).”, as described in Centipede Tunnel Perch.

Decisions, decisions — it is a school day after all.

Critter tunnel in place. Note the spaced cut-outs. Are you [critter] in or are you out?

Old palm fronds, salvaged/harvested from the Habitat Garden Resource Pile, are used to line the tunnel. Accomplishes: 1) keeps tunnel in place, 2) installs Life-alive! biome to project, 3) provides critters with a moisture laden maze of cavities, and 4) empties the palm frond pile. Turn trash to treasure!

Middle Stump has a new home. Saddleback gets an infussion of life.

Adding more wood for the habitat’s cavern-filled mound. Also, scraping soil to cover tunnel/palm fronds.

Backfilling to plant up against East Log.

Moving a rock slab into Saddleback.

And another rock.

The goal here is to create a planting mound joined with the plants in the foreground, those meadow barley of Twisted North Mound.

Soil for the mound.

In comes a cavity maker.

Saddleback’s north side is about to get a rock slab that will create cavities.

North end of Saddleback sealed off with a rock slab. Middle Stump is really now in Middle Earth!

Mounding soil.

And the bin of topsoil.

Woodchips.

Time to reclaim the woodchips from the start of the project.

Planting meadow barley.

Each meadow barley plug is planted top flush with soil surface. Then the grasses are lightly surrounded with woodchips, enough to support the grasses but not so much to block sunlight.

Planting meadow barley and juncus.

Dark Soil Light Wood Saddleback — The After.

1 Month After Installation

A western fence lizard surfaces from within Saddleback.

Same lizard back inside and out another exit. Fun in the sun.

Thank you, as always, to Sunny Galbraith, teacher at Orchard View School, Sebastopol, and her students. Also, much thanks to the Staff and Board of the Laguna Foundation, particularly the Restoration and Conservation Science Department: Wendy Trowbridge, Director; Brent Reed, Ecological Program Manager; Sarah Gordon, Conservation Science Program Manager; Paul Weber, Restoration Field Supervisor; Asa Voight, Restoration Technician II; Hannah Werdmuller, Restoration Technician; and Julie Skopal, Nursery Manager.

Enjoy your habitat installations. Habitat it!

Tony

Centipede Tunnel Perch — An Outdoor Classroom Wildlife Habitat Installation

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Feb 142017

Centipede Tunnel Perch — The Before. Northwest view. Previous installations in the Habitat Garden (nearest to farthest): Cookie Monster Perch, Garter Snake Ravine, Log Pile Apartments, Compost Cricket Corral, Big Splash Hotel and Spa, and Salamander French Drain, the last of which is nearly under the willow to the left.

Centipede Tunnel Perch is a wildlife habitat installed near the Habitat Landscaping Resource Center (otherwise known as the “compost” and “log pile”) at the Laguna Foundation‘s Laguna Environmental Center, or LEC, located at 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, California, 95401. The installation was an outdoor classroom activity. Date: January 19, 2017. School: Orchard View School, Sebastopol, California. Teacher: Sunny Galbraith. Me: Tony McGuigan, from Spore Lore.

In a nutshell, this wildlife habitat installation is 3 tasks at the Habitat Garden. The Habitat Garden can be considered the collective of wildlife habitat installations, some of which are listed under the photo, above, and all the natural (organic) materials on hand. Most of those on-hand materials are the compost and branch/log pile.

1st Task — To get a large mass of wood buried deep into the soil so it will provide moisture to critters months after the rains have gone.

2nd Task — To use the soil dug from the wood’s hole to direct water to the wood.

3rd Task — To plant native sedge to hold the soil bank downstream from Centipede Tunnel Perch.

Prep — 3 Days Before Installation

Northeast corner of concrete slab behind the Nursery. Right: Garter Snake Ravine habitat with “weeds”, mostly the alien (non-native) Italian rye grass, an annual (per the local farmer, Stuart). Left: Log Pile Apartments and Compost Critter Corral habitats and Santa Barbara sedge (Carex barbarae). The students will be sheet mulching over the weeds and planting Santa Barbara sedge to cover both sides of the slab’s corner.

A pile of old straw is moved away to dig the deep hole for the habitat. Ultimately, a perch-like long piece of tree trunk will stand upright in the hole. The deeper the hole, the more stable the vertical post/pole will be. Also, the deeper the hole, the shorter (off the ground) the pole becomes. Grandiose towering structure VERSUS safety — always a hard weighing between the two! Note the old straw was left there to break down AND to keep the adobe clay soil moist, for digging such a hole. Wet/moisturize the dry, hard adobe clay soil one day and dig into soft, pliable adobe the next day.

A further note about digging here. The digging is horrendous at this site — all the more reason to be digging here. We will be unearthing the nearby road crew’s dumping of asphalt road grading, circa 1950’s, including many book-sized slabs of asphalt. That “worthless” soil will be our new treasure in creating a berm of soil to direct rainfall to the habitat.

A shovel head deep into the center of the Earth. Note the straw bale far right and the little berm of hole soil between the straw and the hole. That berm will help keep rainwater (we are expecting rain on installation day) away from the area. The installation area will be slippery enough without a running creek!

Prep — 2 Days Before Installation

Centipede Tunnel Perch’s perch has arrived, complete with safety cone hat.

Late morning rain. Perfect time to start work. Tomorrow, this new wildlife habitat will be installed by Orchard View students. Note this microcosm canyon. Our intention here is to capture as much water as possible and store it for as long as possible, so that amphibians would thrive here. (If amphibians can thrive, most other critter groups will have a fair chance of survival, too.) So, the adobe canyon, once a road crew dump, has become an adobe-lined, wood-filled water basin with outlet.

Regarding the habitat’s water outlet (mentioned in last paragraph), it is the height of the Santa Barbara sedge thicket, downstream from Centipede Tunnel Perch, that determines how far and wide Habitat Garden Pond becomes. Alas, a lake is born, on each good rain. As rainwater sits in the Lake, submerged wood will saturate that rainwater and store it. (Habitat Garden Adobe Canyon if you must have a name.)

Water! Precious stuff. So, rather than allow this road runoff rainwater to escape into the field downstream, through the double gate, a small soil berm will direct the rainwater to the Habitat Garden, to then be drained behind the Nursery and flow into the field. Either way, berm or not, the downhill field will get the water. With berm keeps the gate area dryer and brings water to the Habitat Garden.

Prep — Installation Day — Before Students

Installation Day. The soil is saturated with very little water in the hole. Perfect! I like easier digging. Note the black ABS tape on the posthole digger’s handles at 3-feet and 6-feet. The hole will be dug to the 6-feet mark.

Preparing to dig. Note that the wheelbarrow is lined with straw to cleanly dump the wet adobe soil harvested from the hole. The metal digging bar will straddle across the sides of the wheelbarrow and provide a knock-off edge for clearing out the posthole digger clams. Posthole digger in foreground (clams are at collecting end).

Muck removal on a bright shiny day. Note that the wood, blue-painted metal trench shovel (top) has its curve parallel with the curve of the posthole digger clam (below). The shovel will be flipped to clean the posthole digger’s right side, maintaining curve-curve parallel position. Note digging bar for banging the mud loose.

Dry Run photo op. Sizing the ABS 6″ corrugated perforated drainpipe Tunnel in the habitat.

Using a Milwaukee HACKZALL® to cut the plastic corrugated perforated pipe to install Exit/Entrance’s in the tunnel. Centipede Tunnel Perch includes tenancy options for critters using it. Eat, stay, have a family here, at least take a drink of water (meets the 4 elements of Habitat), then you can enter or leave through the many Exit/Entrance’s. Each Exit/Entrance is about 6-8″ long and 2″ wide (2 corrugation trenches). Note my boots are pinning the drainpipe up against the table’s leg posts.

Halfway done installing Exit/Entrance’s on this side of the pipe. The pipe will then be flipped over so that Exit/Entrance’s can be cut into that side, position alternating with the first side’s Exit/Entrance’s. Note the sawblade’s angle to ensure that both long sawcuts will meet.

The Tunnel is ready for installation. Exit/Entrance’s cut-outs collected in center.

View THROUGH the Tunnel to the concrete slab below.

Installation Day — The Students Are Here!

Removal of the adobe berm inside the installation zone. This soil will be the foundation for the road runoff berm.

Weeding the soil bank before sheet mulching. Weeds are dropped in place to keep the topsoil nutrients/microbes on site.

Thriving on a damp winter day. This outdoor classroom rocks! Takes a Village to support outdoor classrooms.

Progress of the hole. A lower platform has been stomped around the perch’s hole. That’s adobe! Note the rain workgear: mud boots and work-friendly rainsuit.

Your job (Yellow Slicker) is to stand here. And teacher Sunny did it so well while students pried Santa Barbara sedge plants from their pots. The sedge clumps were evenly spaced on the cardboard sheet mulching. Loose soil fill over the cardboard and between the plants will secure the plants in place on the bank.

Perch has been dropped into its hole. Note the ropes hanging on Perch. A triad of ropes was used to upright the tall, heavy tree trunk. One more rope was used to spin Perch after it vertically rested in the hole.

Students secure/stuff/wedge one end of Centipede Tunnel alongside Perch in the hole.

Inspection. And good news — Centipede Tunnel Perch passes. Note that the left end of Tunnel goes into the hole for Perch, toward moisture. The other end of Tunnel opens to ground level, under a log pile (or wood causeways if you are a cricket) where food (smaller critters) are plentiful.

Student stands on Tunnel while it is buried with old straw.

Foreground: Finishing touches for sedge transplanting — loose soil to fill in thin spots.

Background: Entire old straw pile is thrown at the base of Perch.

Trimming the sedge = twist and cut with pruning shears. The sedge leaves are used for mulch between the newly transplanted sedge bundles. Do plants have a feedback system such that dead leaves in the soil trigger growth? Always questions!

Students installing a temporary soil bank retaining wall. Short branches horizontal, saved-from-the-wood-bin stakes vertical. By the time these flimsy materials rot, like next year, the sedge bank will be glad to eat it up, glad to be nourished by the decaying wood. AND, most of that decay process will be from our Decomposer friends. Habitat it!

Sedge Corners. Note the tempory retaining wall of mulch material (little sticks, stakes, woodchips, soil). Perch is the blonde piece of wood on the far right of the tower of perches.

Centipede Tunnel Perch — The After. Note far right, the pooled water stopped from going to the gate by the new berm.

Hop, hop, and a few more. Wonder if my froggy friends will be at Habitat Garden Lake tonight?

Farmer Stuart moving hay for Stone Farm‘s plow horses.

Sedge Corners lookin’ good!

Centipede Tunnel Perch lookin’ good!

Time to call it an Outdoor Classroom Wildlife Habitat Installation Day! Time to give up the habitat to the critters. Time to go home, watch the receding Laguna de Santa Rosa leave the oak meadows along its banks.

Thank you, as always, to Sunny Galbraith, teacher at Orchard View School, Sebastopol, and her students. Also, much thanks to the Staff and Board of the Laguna Foundation, particularly the Restoration and Conservation Science Department: Wendy Trowbridge, Director; Brent Reed, Ecological Program Manager; and Paul Weber, Restoration Field Supervisor, and Julie Skopal, Nursery Manager.

Thank you to Aaron Nunez, the then Ecological Project Manager. Aaron has left the Laguna Foundation’s employment and is currently working elsewhere. Yay for Aaron! We teachers, students, and critters all appreciated his work while at the Laguna Foundation.

Enjoy your habitat installations. Habitat it!

Tony

Badger Hole Hollow — Outdoor Classroom installs a Wildlife Habitat

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May 012015

Badger Hole Hollow is a cleanup project turned Wildlife Habitat Installation. This project is an Outdoor Classroom project: Orchard View School; Sunny Galbraith, teacher, and 7 of her Biology students. Location: Laguna Environmental Center. Date of classroom project: April 15th, 2015.

The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation operates the Laguna Environmental Center, or LEC, on Stone Farm, at 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, California, 95401. This wildlife habitat installation borders the LEC’s (Laguna Environmental Center’s) Native Plant Nursery, which is used for the Foundation’s Conservation Program.

About 2 years ago, on October 3, 2013, a massive valley oak fell in Doyle Park, Santa Rosa. The City of Santa Rosa had sections of the tree hauled off to one of its wood “graveyards”. The Laguna Foundation coaxed Stone Horse‘s farmer, Stuart Schroeder, to use his implement carrier to bring sections of the huge Doyle Park valley oak to the Laguna Foundation, the purpose being to foster landscape rehabilitation to the Laguna Environmental Center’s fairly recent construction zone around Heron Hall.

“Just a little to the left and back a bit.” Doyle Park Heritage (valley) Oak section is added to the habitat landscaping of the LEC. Note the implement carrier, with its 4-chain hoist — a flywheel at the head of the metal frame’s roof turns pipes that winds those chains around the pipes. The chains shorten thereby lifting the load. Great way to lift a tree! And move it!

2013.

2015. These oak sections, although they will ultimately “return to the earth”, could look more naturally placed in the landscape. They will be repositioned to hide the human-made chainsaw cuts. And in doing so a wildlife habitat will be created.

Close-up of BEFORE. Two oak log sections with their chainsaw cuts facing each other.

A lot to prep before the students arrive. The larger section will be partially buried — the chainsaw cut will sit in a hole and the shredded, more-naturally broken end will twist skyward. One end will create den structure for subterranean animals and the other will provide perch-above-the-grasses for climbing animals and birds. Woodchip mulch is dumped against Trunk (the larger section) 2 weeks before installation date to wick water to the adobe soil below. Softening the soil with moisture will make the digging soooo much easier!

Woodchip mulch is piled up against Trunk (larger section) and watered to moisten the adobe soil 2 weeks prior to digging.

One day before installation date. Staff and an intern discuss pulling weeds. One staffer has a weed by the throat. This native plant landscape will some day be a native plant meadow; till then, weeding is an essential job. Note the soil bins in queue next to the oak logs — they will store soil as the hole for Trunk is dug. Bin 1 = top soil; Bin 2 = layer under the topsoil; Bin 3 = less rich sol, adobe clay; Bin 4 = heavy adobe clay. The bins were labeled as dug and stored to allow the correct bin/soil layer to be returned to the habitat installation at the right time. Preserving the soil layers helps disrupt the soil ingredients less, including critters and soil microbes. Nutrients and critters that were living in the topsoil remain in the topsoil. The same is true for the other soil layers.

A note labels Bin 3 to sequence when its soil will return to the installation.

The spade head marks the spot — we will bury our treasure (Trunk) here. The smaller oak tree section, which has been subsequently named “Crocodile”, has been moved out of the way. A cardboard barricade has been temporarily installed to throw dug soil onto; a pile will be created close by to be able to cover over Trunk/hole once Trunk is slid into position, that is, dropped into the hole.

Digging so that Trunk can drop into a hole. The soil pile will return over Trunk, then planted.

Trunk is coaxed via truck chain into its 4-foot hole rest.

Almost there — time to remove the lower chain bolt. Once the lower bolt was removed, the Trunk was edged vertically into the hole from the chain looped around Trunk’s “top” end.

The next morning — installation day for Badger Hole Hollow! The digging bar perimeter will help the students walk carefully around the native plants living alongside Badger Hole Hollow, or “BHH”. Trunk is far enough in the ground it will stay put, minimizing any danger issue. The smaller oak section, Crocodile, will be positioned by today’s Biology class students.

Julia, a student donating her time at the LEC, transplants native plants, like the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) shown above, to a temporary mound of moist woodchips. The collected plants will be saved from being trampled during the installation and then will be replaced on or alongside Badger Hole Hollow as a finishing touch. If 1 out of 3 or 4 survive the transplant, at least there will be one more native plant to jumpstart the installation.

Orchard View students are on site. Red and blue irrigation flags were used to create easily visible walkways between the established (wanted) native plants.

Crocodile wrestling — students position Crocodile into a position that will maximize the wood hulk’s ground surface coverage (for animal shelter) and its landscaping beauty.

Students break up a stick pile 1) to get rid of the pile of sticks from the compost pile, and 2) to provide organic debris under the habitat installation’s soil planting. Microbes to crawly critters to critters that eat those lower trophic animals will call the small buried stick pile home, habitat.

A student breaks up sticks, then uses his body weight to compress the broken stick pile up against Trunk and Crocodile.

Soil is backfilled (background) and woodchips are mixed into the habitat to prepare for plantings.

Juncus, or California gold rush (Juncus patens), is planted in between and at the base of Trunk and Crocodile. The juncus, which love moisture, will be on and downslope of the soil/woodchip pile between the 2 oak tree sections.

Field sedge (Carex praegegracillus) plugs are planted in the surrounding area of BHH. –Per Wikipedia, “ [Field sedge] tolerates disturbed habitat such as roadsides and thrives in alkaline substrates.” In other words, field sedge is a good choice for our native plant restoration, and subsequent wildlife habitat creation, of this graded soil next to LEC’s road.

Fields sedge and juncus are planted on Badger Hole Hollow’s hill.

Badger Hole Hollow gets water. This outdoor classroom rocks!

Badger Hole Hollow wildlife habitat has been installed AND field sedge plugs have been planted up to the road’s edge.

A jack rabbit leaps (center of photo) above the landscape’s sedges and grasses as the project is cleaned up.

Badger Hole Hollow will rest now and enjoy the sunset.

Close-up of AFTER. All in all, Trunk and Crocodile have had a great day.

Will a badger come to live under or near Badger Hole Hollow? Perhaps, perhaps not, but in the meantime, the critters of the landscape have another option in the terraine.

The students of Orchard View School, teacher Sunny Galbraith, and Cordy and David and I had fun at this outdoor classroom Biology project. A thank you also to the Laguna Foundation’s staff, especially Wendy Trowbridge, Director of Restoration and Conservation Science Programs, and Brent Reed, Restoration Projects Supervisor. Thanks for the plants, Brent. Cool project!

Enjoy your wildlife habitat creations. Habitat it!

Tony

Pics from last month:

[To the Orchard View Students — Sorry I did not get last month’s photos out sooner. I must have had my drill set for REVERSE!]

Native Plants installed in Habitat Garden, March 2015

A Western Fence Lizard crawls into the sun from Compost Cricket Corral.

Cricket Compost Corral Gets A Habitat Blanket

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Mar 052015

Cricket Compost Corral is a wildlife habitat installation that was installed October 2014 at the Laguna Environmental Center. This post is about moving a garden resource (debris) pile to Cricket Compost Corral. The new compost will help jumpstart the compost pile and the wildlife habitat features of the pile. The new compost will help raise the soil level of the compost so that the compost will drain better, stay warmer, and work more efficiently. Also, the new compost resources will come with a rich biota of fungi, soil microbes, crawly critters, and perhaps animals of higher trophic levels.

The Laguna de Santa Rosa Foundation, operates the Laguna Environmental Center, on Stone Farm, at 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa, California, 95401. This wildlife habitat installation borders the LEC’s (Laguna Environmental Center’s) Native Plant Nursery, which is used for the Foundation’s Restoration Program.

“Cricket Compost Corral Gets A Habitat Blanket” is an outdoor classroom project — Science is just the beginning! The students of Orchard View School, substitute teacher Alison, and I had fun at this outdoor classroom Biology project. Teacher Sunny Galbraith worked logistics before installation day.

Before the students arrive — fenceline garden resource pile:

Foreground = Veggie Garden at the LEC. The resource debris pile to be moved is in the background, straight back off the garden’s corner, next to the fence, left of the propane tank.

Winter rains have greened the grass around the resource pile.

Everyone grab a tool. Let’s move this pile!

“Rusty” will help us move the resource pile across the LEC grounds quickly, saving a lot of wheelbarrow loads.

Gathering organic debris (horse manure and fallen poplar branches) to add to Cricket Compost Corral.

Using the gathered manure/branches to build up a side of CCC.

Farmer Stuart Schroeder, of Stone Farm, lends a tractor to add a layer of wood chips for the students to spread.

Logs are used to frame the new resources added to CCC. The wood frame will help keep the new higher soil level intact, wick water to the Santa Barbara sedge to be planted, and provide habitat for critters.

Moving the resource pile:

Students haul off the resource pile to the truck trailer.

A Pacific Tree Frog (Pseudacris regilla), green phase, hides in the resource pile.

Keep it Science — we listed all the critters we saw. The resource pile is a critter mystery pile.

Adding the resource pile to Cricket Compost Corral:

Wood chips are spread to make a rich base for the resource pile on Cricket Compost Corral.

Foreground, a student plants Santa Barbara sedge, a native, drought-tolerant plant that will hold the compost’s hill in place. Far right (back), students install driftwood to complete the frame of CCC.

Unloading Rusty the Trailer. About this time during unloading, a western fence lizard was found in the trailer and introduced into Cricket Compost Corral. You have a new home!

A bouquet of veggie garden sticks for Cricket Compost Corral.

One garden’s debris is another garden’s treasure.

Securing the end of CCC’s frame with driftwood held in place by palm tree frond wedges.

In goes a palm tree wedge — local, FREE materials!

A sledge to finish CCC’s frame.

Finishing touches on CCC gets a habitat blanket:

The veggie garden resource pile now sits on top of Cricket Compost Corral.

Tree limbs are staked into place to terrace plant Santa Barbara sedge along CCC’s front edge. The compost gets a lot of fuel from keeping the Nursery’s concrete swept.

More stakes.

Cleaning tools before our class is finished. Terrace planting of Santa Barbara sedge to keep the compost’s soil level from eroding. Ultimately, the wood will rot away but the sedge mound will hold the soil in place. The sedge will also provide habitat for the compost’s critters. Close up of sedge planting.A plug of sedge (center) sits in a soil-filled raised bed made by two tree limbs.Weeds in front. Sedge behind the terracing limb.A plug of grass with yarrow plants planted at the base of adjacent Log Pile Apartments.

Watered down and ready to call the job done.

A thank you to the Laguna Foundation’s staff, especially Wendy Trowbridge, Director of Restoration and Conservation Science Programs, and Brent Reed, Restoration Projects Supervisor. Cool project!

Enjoy your wildlife habitat creations. Habitat it!

Tony

Wildlife at Orchard View student-built habitats at the LEC

Western fence lizard in Log Pile Apartments.

Resting bird about to get company. Habitat is Garter Snake Ravine. Bird cam photo.

Violet Green Swallow perching westward. Habitat is Garter Snake Ravine. Bird cam photo.

Caught one! White Short Bill, male, seasonal outfit, unshaven. Bird cam photo.

Garter Snake Ravine — a Wildlife Habitat Installation

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Jan 282015

Students pull up Garter Snake Ravine’s barn owl perch using a block-and-tackle.

Garter Snake Ravine is a wildlife habitat installation that incorporates a deep hole cut into adobe soil, a water reservoir, a large-branches heap (BIG stick pile), a Fungus DreamWorld, and a Science Experiment.

As mentioned in Spore Lore’s post, Prep for Garter Snake Ravine, 1-3-2015, the adobe hole, AKA “Ravine”, was left full of water to soften the hardpan adobe soil in the bottom of the hole. Sure enough, a week later, we were able to dig the hole another foot deeper — that much more space/capacity for the new habitat installation. The deeper hole will also give the owl perch more vertical stability; the upside down poplar tree will be buried deeper.

A long-handled posthole digger at the ready in Garter Snake Ravine after a week of soaking the hole with water.

The dug-out adobe soil was used to raise the compost’s ground level to help keep the compost out of winter’s wet. Garter Snake Ravine is two doors down from Compost Cricket Corral; Log Pile Apartments is between them. So to review, in the photo above, the water is overflowing Garter Snake Ravine, flowing under Log Pile Apartments, and moistening the raised banks of Compost Cricket Corral BUT not saturating the compost pile because of the now raised soil level of the compost piles.

A tree has fallen! No one was there to hear it but the crushed fence leaves a reminder. The poplar tree split at its crown with the snapped-off trunk landing into the adjacent horse corral. Problem: tree in corral. Solution: we just found ourselves an owl perch.

A 16-foot section of this poplar tree trunk will become an owl perch in Garter Snake Ravine wildlife habitat.

Because the tree is a poplar, we want to use it in a way that it will not sprout, thrive, and eventually shade the compost piles which are west (shady side) of Garter Snake Ravine. Poplar (Populus) trees are similar to willow trees in that they are both riparian species widely used for stream/watershed restoration. Both Poplar and willow have high levels of rooting hormone. And that’s a problem here — the Ravine habitat will be a water-/moisture-filled vase, like that for table flowers, during the coming wet months. Solution: “plant”, or install, the poplar tree upside down to prevent the rooting process. And don’t forget the trunk stump. This hulk of poplar wood will add to the habitat’s hugelkultur mass. Also, heavy, bulky pieces of wood like this one and others will help stabilize the owl perch, keep it from falling. Note how a staircase of skids was used to roll the stump into the bed trunk. Great to have a helping hand.

The poplar trunk stump waits on the sidelines until the owl perch is placed into the Ravine.

Our initial desire was to raise an owl perch high in the sky to encourage barn owls to hunt and feed at the compost pile. A perch that the barn owls that live on Stone Farm can use. That pair of barn owls (Tyto alba) can sometimes be seen in the palm trees below the Office’s front porch. Hoo called in Rodent Management?

IPM, a Permaculture term, stands for Integrated Pest Management. Rodents can be pests around a farm and Stone Farm is no exception. IPM is a way to handle one of Nature’s jobs by Nature. Traditionally, by introducing, a cure animal. Problems arise when the cure-all species becomes a problem — no other species is well suited to control the alien plant or animal. Such is part of the reason that Native Plants and IPM are considered solutions to removing pests ecologically. Palm fronds are not accepted in the local Resource Center, which makes soil additives from the garden debris (resource!) brought to it. But the fronds will be an asset in the hugelkultur — critters will seek the nooks and crannies between the slowly decomposing fronds.

A bird cam is installed — the camera will be trained on the perch to view owls hunting and eating their meals.

Students create a small retaining wall made from stones and heavy clay removed from the Ravine’s hole. This berm will direct runoff water under the adjacent wildlife habitat installation.

The poplar owl perch is here! Students walk the perch up the woodchip pile to gain height advantage for installing the perch into Ravine’s hole.

Here comes the perch, heading for Ravine’s hole. Note the thinner tree limbs in the foreground; the tree section is being flipped upside down.

The poplar tree section’s thinner branches are tied together to better fit the upside down tree into the Ravine. Note the green rope crossing back and forth — the block and tackle is being threaded for pulling the tree vertical.

Students, on top of the woodchip pile, wait for the signal to assist the block-and-tackle’s raising of the owl perch.

Signaling to the rope puller, “Pull in the slack, batten down the hatches.”

“Pull!”, and up the perch goes with a little help from the top of the woodchip pile. Two safety lines were used in case the perch was accidently pulled past vertical. Note the safety line from the right-most student (right of the woodchip pile). The left-sided safety line is being held by a student standing behind and to the left of the woodchip pile.

The owl perch is edged into place. The poplar tree section has been up-ended.

Students stuff driftwood logs, the poplar stump, palm fronds, and smaller poplar braches (upside down) around the perch to stabilize it. Plenty for all hands to do now; we want to vertically secure the perch and remove the block-and-tackle lines and safety ropes.

Safety check! Lookin’ good; keep packing the hole around the perch.

Still more materials to pack around the perch as it approaches standing on its own, without stabilizing lines.

A breather while the owl perch is finalized. This outdoor classroom rocks!

Students are busy planting Santa Barbara sedge (Carex barbarae), programming the bird cam, and packing the Ravine.

Garter Snake Ravine wildlife habitat installation is completed. Note that the habitat has three major elements: a deep moist adobe hole that will fill to a small pond during the rains, a pile of branches and sticks, and an owl perch. That’s a lot of nooks and crannies for critters to hunt, hide, cool-down, and LIVE! in. First will come the wood-eating fungi and decomposer microbes, then higher trophic critters, then perhaps a mammal (an even higher trophic animal), like a skunk or a possum, that wants to reign over the habitat.

Garter Snake Ravine waits for a perching barn owl throughout the dark night.

Thank you for the wonderful pictures, Jenna.

Enjoy your wildlife habitat creations. Habitat it!

Tony