[APWG] Better version--Test plots and transects before the cereal rye moves in

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Wayne, Tony and All,

Thanks for your email, and this is the better version of this posting.

If you read through the article -- <The allelopathic phenomenon, a
dynamic process>  by Francisco A. Macías, Alberto Oliveros-Bastidas, David
Marín, Diego Castellano and José M.G. Molinillo at 
http://www.regional.org.au/au/allelopathy/2005/1/2/2647_maciasfa.htm?print=1
from Google Scholar, that article covers the cereal rye allelochemical
that Dr. Liu was also working on---it is a PHENOL.

ALL plants produce in greater or lesser amounts, these natural
herbicide-like chemicals, and they are like the poker hand that they deal
out to the ecosystems.  For example, the bean family has very strong
allelochemicals, to keep the grasses away from the nitrogen that the roots
of the bean family are producing.

I have been using the allelochemical effects for all my weed management
and ecological restoration project for over two decades, and to become
intimately aware of these chemicals and their effects is to have an
awesomely powerful tool, that can take care of 99% of your weed and
restoration work for you.

The more details you can measure in your test plots, when you plant the
local native plants into a weed patch,  and measure their interactions,
the faster you are going to be able to convert those weed areas back to
local native plants in the future.

MATHEMATICAL constants for allelopathy -- And if you can convert those
weed/native plant interactions into mathematics, like a scale of 1 to 100,
with 1 being the weakest allelochemical effect, and 100 being the
strongest, then you can start assigning a mathematical constant for the
relative effect of each species.

For example, Yellow Star Thistle, which is considered a very bad, very
invasive weed here in California covering about 25 million acres and
showing no sign of stopping yet, turns out to only be a five, which means
that it is not invasive at all.

Yellow star thistle, contrary to popular belief, is just a default weed,
only growing where the California native ecosystem has been exterminated.
If you play the poker-game with yellow star thistle, sowing in almost any 
native plant, beats a 5.

TONY’s ryegrass petri dish at
http://www.unps.org/olyhills/secalearea081509.jpg is a perfect picture. 
There are at least three things going on in that picture.  A monoculture
of cereal rye, and some relic natives able to withstand what looks on the
surface, to be an invasive weed.

IS THE CEREAL RYE REALLY INVASIVE, or is it just taking advantage of a
vacancy sign that we have put out in the ecosystem--is the cereal rye just
filling in gaps in the native ecosystem caused by grazing, and maybe from
soil problems, like I show at http://www.ecoseeds.com/good.example.html ?

Looking at the photo at http://www.unps.org/olyhills/secalearea081509.jpg,
judging from the relic grasses and natives that are marked in the picture,
obviously 100-200 years ago, those native species grew in a greater
density, like close to 100% cover in between the trees and shrubs.  Today,
it looks like 1% native grass cover, so before the cereal rye came in,
what was growing between the bushes, in that area that is now cereal rye?

USE THE RELIC NATIVES as a indication of what species need to be in your
test plots.

1.) TEST PLOT SIZE.  I start with one by 2 meters for each treatment, and
stake the corners with wood stakes, except in expansive clays that would
pop the stakes out overwinter, then I use rebar.   That is what is show of
the photo of a set of test plots on the web page at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/greatbasin.html

2.) START GRASS SEEDLINGS -For the cereal rye test plots, I would start
some native grass seedlings now in flats of potting soil, and plant them
out in three months in the fall when the ground is moist after some rain,
and plant them out bare rooted at different densities, with single species
in each plot.

3.) HARVEST LOCAL SEEDS - I would be harvesting local native seeds of
various other native broadleaf plants, to sow directly into the test
plots.  Try and get seed of the local native bean family, native sunflower
family, native cucumber or native tomato family, and native Indian
paintbrush family, for example.

If you have wild sunflowers in the area, Heterotheca or Grindelia, they
are some of the strongest allelopathic members of our western ecosystems. 
Also any weedy native that cattle and sheep hate to eat or is poisonous to
them, is always great for your test plots.

4.) MIMIC THE LARGER AREA - However you set up your cereal rye test plots,
will need to be the same way you would convert the whole area back to
natives eventually.  That is what I show in the pictures at
http://www.ecoseeds.com/greatbasin.html, which was a 100 mile by 50 foot
wide pipeline.

5.) TRANSLATABLE - Any seed-sowing in test plots must be translatable to
large scale.  So whatever you do, or what we did in the test plots, had to
be translatable into a 100 mile long planting.  Part of the project was to
conserve the large rocks that were in the right-of-way on the surface, and
in the Great Basin, lichens usually grow on the upper rock surface.  Part
of the restoration required that the large rock be put back on the
surface, and we joked that they all need to be put back, lichen-side up.

6.) PLANTING SEEDLINGS - The purpose of planting native plant seedlings in
the test plots, is to see how those particular native species interact
with the weeds, not to expect that you are going to be planting out plants
in the larger area.

7.)  EX-SITU TEST POTS.  And always go your two EX-SITU test pot, one pot
with the local soil and the other with potting soil, and as I said in my
other email, give them the same conditions as your other test plots---do
not put them in a greenhouse for example.

As soon as possible, I would do very exacting measurements of the
percentage cover of all of the native and exotic species at the edge of
the cereal rye, so you get a very accurate before-picture of the
composition and interaction of the ecosystem, before the cereal rye moves
into that area.  My guess is, that you are only going to find less than
10% native grass cover, and maybe a lot of bare ground, or ground covered
by other, much smaller exotics?

The quick and easy method, is to establish a permanent line, toe-point
transect, and go a good distance with it, like 800-1,000 feet or more, and
note at each step, what plant your toe is stepping on, and also note bare
ground and rocks.

INVASIVES may turn out to just be default weeds, holding the soil, waiting
for you to sow back the natives.

I was hired to work with the US Forest Service on the Tarweed problem in
the Franklin Basin in Idaho about 12 years ago.  Three generation of
researchers since the 1920s had been working, without any successes at
all,  to get something to grow in this solid monoculture of tarweed that
extends from Idaho to New Mexico at about 7-8,000 feet.

Fortunately, tarweed is a local native, and was the last of over 100
species of native that originally covered the area, before they were
grazed to the dust by sheep and cattle in the 1800s.

Tarweed was looked at as a horrible invasive weed, but it was really just
a default plant, patiently holding the soil, and waiting for us to sow
back the rest of the 100 species, to bring back the ecosystem.

That is what I proposed,  and that is what finally worked in the test
plots, that were sown with the original local native species.  The fourth
generation of researchers, finally cracked the case of the Rocky Mountain,
solid tarweed patches.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333