[APWG] Costs of first successful weed conversions, to 100% natives

[Craig Dremann - Redwood City Seed Company]

Dear Wayne and All,

Thanks for your two emails.  I hope I answer both of your comments, in
this reply.

Wouldn’t have been nice, if we started 60 years ago, maybe at the same
time the first computers were being built, in developing successful
ecological restoration technologies, that could quickly and efficiently
convert solid weed patches, back to 100% local native species within 90
days or less, with no future maintenance?

And it also would have been be nice if weed management and ecological
restoration for the last 60 years, had the same annual research and
development budgets, as the computer did, from some government agency,
like the US military?

That is why my suggested weed-to-solid native plant conversion costs are
so high, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/standards.html because the costs
include all the Tiny Test plots work you have to do, in order to invent
the necessary ecological restoration technologies, that have rapid
Performance Standards supporting them.

You can see for the first few years at the I-505 site in the Sacramento
Valley, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/road.test.html the UC Davis student who
did the planting, started out with lots of Tiny Test plots with many, many
different treatments.

The UC Davis student was experimenting with my Tiny Test plot method, that
he had heard about at my Caltrans workshop in 2000 in Eureka, that he
attended.  You can see all the wood stakes at the west side of the I-505
site, marking out all the different treatments, in one of my pictures.

What he did not do, is to continue those Tiny test plots until they were
100% successful.  He unfortunately reverted to the old method, of using
the entire project as one big huge test plot with only one treatment,
instead of achieving successes in the very small Tiny Test plots first.

The photos of the I-505 Sacramento valley test plots, that I took last
Friday, are failing for several reasons, but the current failure on the
resowing of the west side plot is for at least three reasons:

(1.) DRILL SEEDED, huge mistake.  The plot was drill seeded instead of
broadcast-sown.

(2.) SOWING RATE, way too low. The sowing rate of the Stipa grass was only
about 1/10th of the rate per acre needed to get good cover on the site,
and,

(3.) SINGLE SPECIES, huge mistake. Only one native species was sown, and
no other natives were sown to fill the niche of the broadleaf weeds, like
anything from the sunflower family to take the place of the yellow star
thistle, for example.

I gave a talk for the Bureau of Land Management weed meeting a few years
ago, where I suggested that the current state of weed management in
California, is about at the same efficiency level as the world’s fastest
computer in 1952-6, with 5K of RAM, with a stored memory of 64K, which you
can see at http://www.ecoseeds.com/talk.html.

So to get cheap weed-to-100% native plant conversions, you can do at least
three things:

1.) GET ANNUAL BUDGETS necessary to invent the restoration technologies
with Performance Standards, to get 100% weed cover and zero weeds, within
90 days or less, and no future maintenance?

2.) ADD THOSE INVENTING COSTS to the first projects within a particular
ecosystem, with the anticipation that after inventing those successfully
technologies with Performance Standards, they could just be cut-and-pasted
more or less for free, onto other projects nearby?

However, even if you invent successful restoration technologies for one
acre, if you then try to restore the exact same ecosystem only a few miles
away, there are still going to be costs to repeat a lot of the Tiny Test
plots, to reconfirm the successes of your technologies on a small scale
before you do the big project.

3.) BUY OR LICENSE the successful Ecological Restoration technologies from
someone who has already invented methods that have Performance Standards
supporting them, to achieve the 100% native and zero weed cover, within 90
days or less, and zero future maintenance.

That is what Bill Gates did to get his original DOS system, he bought it
outright from another inventor, who did not know the potential of what he
had.  You can see that story in the movie, Pirates of Silicon Valley.

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333