Tips, tricks, and a quick peek into the everyday life of the conservation district.
Students at Arlington and Weston High School recently completed rain catchment projects at their schools. Combined, both projects have the capacity to collect and store 1,430 gallons of water!
Read MoreSnohomish Conservation District was recently awarded the ‘State Auditor’s Stewardship Award’ for ‘outstanding accomplishment in the stewardship of public resources as we pursue the shared goal of government that works better, costs less, and earns greater public trust’.
Read MoreTwo local residents were recently awarded the Vim Wright ‘Building Bridges’ award at the 2016 annual meeting of the Washington Association of Conservation Districts in Bellingham. This year’s award went to Tristan Klesick, Klesick Farms and Terry Williams, Tulalip Tribes.
Read MoreHow will agriculture and salmon coexist? What will happen as our landscape and climate change over the next few decades? These questions and many more were the topic of a discussion held at the November ‘Focus on Farming’ conference in Monroe. Some of the pressing issues included: the projected impacts of climate change on crops, how farmers can plan for flooding risks and changing weather patterns and how they can take advantage of longer growing seasons and higher levels of carbon dioxide. Presenters included: Tristan Klesick, Klesick Family Farm and Co-Chair of the Sustainable Lands Strategy group; Will Stelle, NOAA Fisheries; Chad Kruger, WSU Extension; and Cindy Dittbrenner, Snohomish Conservation District. The ultimate goal is to form an Agriculture Resilience Plan for agriculture and to help farmers plan for risk.
To learn more, visit http://snohomishcd.org/ag-resilience.
Our Board of Supervisors and Staff are pleased to announce the 2016 Conservation Leaders of the year. We're honoring a diverse set of local leaders this year- from commercial farmers to urban residents and children to elders. One thing is for sure, this year’s recipients are an incredible group whose collective accomplishments are sure to inspire others to take action to make this world a better place.
Read MoreIn the pouring rain, on Thursday, October 13th a group of students from Jackson High School's Green Team finished a year-long project to transform a large, compacted, bare area of soil into a beautiful sustainable landscape.
Read MoreMake A Difference Day was on Saturday, October 22. Volunteers from various community groups showed up to help with projects that will protect Puget Sound. These volunteers planted plants in a large rain garden and helped to build 150 rain barrels out of upcycled food-grade barrels.
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Our one-day rain barrel sale is back, for the last time in 2016. Purchase your barrel on Saturday, October 22 at the Mill Creek Lowe's Parking Lot. Snohomish Conservation District is teaming up with Lowe's, King 5, and the Glenn Phillips Law Firm to build 150 rain barrels in the morning before the sale as part of Make a Difference Day. Once installed, the rain barrels will divert approximately 135,000 gallons of polluted storm water from entering our waterways each year.
You will get a pre-assembled 55-gallon barrel with sturdy components (spigot, overflow spout, mesh over inlet).
Residents who live or own land in portions of the Skykomish, Snohomish and Stillaguamish River watersheds may be eligible for funding through a new grant program called the Regional Conservation Partnership Program or RCPP. Landowners can choose from livestock heavy-use areas, manure storage and composting systems, roof runoff systems, cover crops, stream plantings, fish passage barrier removal and much more.
Read MoreSnohomish Conservation District co-hosted a solar workshop and farm tour on October 5th that allowed people to see a working system on a local farm and learn about incentives for solar projects on farms.
Read More2016 marks the 75th anniversary of Snohomish Conservation District. There have been so many great leaders who have championed conservation here in Snohomish County, on Camano Island, and in the Puget Sound area. Some have been recognized, others not so much. Here are a few who have worked with us, or in the area, that we'd like to recognize, along with three books which highlight the life and work of these pioneer leaders.
Read MoreHave you had a new farm project on the back burner that always seems to be waiting for the right moment or enough extra cash to begin? Maybe a manure bin, soil improvements or gutters and downspouts for the barn (the muddy season is fast approaching, after all). Fortunately for residents of portions of the Snohomish and Stillaguamish River watersheds, the time to begin may be now.
Read MoreCover cropping builds soils health by increasing organic matter which in turn can help drainage, retain soil moisture, increase nutrient availability and reduce erosion. Ideal planting dates will vary regionally but here in the PNW many growers will seed in the coming weeks. This means that some tough decisions will need to be made concerning which cover is right for you!
Read MoreThe shorter days of autumn inspire us to slow down after a busy summer, but accomplishing a few tasks before the rains set in and the winds start to blow will make winter more pleasant and surprise you with a healthy land and soil-scape next spring.
Read MoreAs luck would have it, Greg Moga, owner of a historic Snohomish valley farm, came to us. Moga is on the board of The Nature Conservancy and shortly after buying a 98-acre farm, he was referred to us by another Nature Conservancy member for tips on planting grasses that would attract birds and other wildlife.
Read MoreThis was the first year we added the option for Plant Sale shoppers to donate money toward schoolyard restoration projects. This past spring, several schools received and planted their plants. We wanted to be sure to share some photos of the transformation! Our hope is that this is just the beginning of more restoration and beautification to come.
We hope you enjoy these photos, and if you donated, we want to say THANK YOU for helping 'students plant the future'!
Read MoreWe have a new opening at our Lake Stevens Office. The position of Community Conservation Resource Technician will provide project design and implementation support, landowner outreach and technical assistance for the Community Conservation team.
Read MoreWe are looking for a dependable and enthusiastic educator to present environmental classroom lessons and outdoor field trips for grades 4-12.
Read MoreAre you an 18 to 25-year-old (or know one) who wants to gain valuable experience while earning a paycheck and an AmeriCorps education reward? Check out these newly listed positions!
Read MoreBy Kevin Zobrist, WSU Extension Forester
Summer’s a good time to take a walk in your woods for more than recreation and exercise. You can look for danger trees, areas to thin or harvest, and signs of disease.
Do your Western hemlock trees have structures that look like the ones shown in the photo? These are called “witch’s brooms.” They come in all shapes and sizes but are always characterized by swollen, deformed, and overlapping branching patterns. This is caused by hemlock dwarf mistletoe, a parasitic plant.
Dwarf mistletoes are different from true mistletoes, but all mistletoes are parasitic. The plant roots into the branch of the tree, causing swollen, deformed growth. There are a number of dwarf mistletoes out there affecting different tree species (most are host-specific). Hemlock dwarf mistletoe is the only one of significant consequence in Western Washington, and it is specific to hemlock trees, though there is some evidence that it may occasionally inhabit Douglas-fir (rare at most).
In the summer, mistletoe launches sticky seeds that can travel 20 feet. If the seed lands on a hemlock, it sticks and begins a new infection. This can eventually cause mortality in a heavily-infested tree by deforming the branches, and by robbing the tree of resources.
What should you do? Not necessarily anything. Dwarf mistletoe is native, and it is a normal, natural agent in the forest. It has ecological benefits of providing some great structures for wildlife. If you are trying to grow hemlock though, it may cause concern as it can spread pretty aggressively from tree to tree.
Young hemlocks in the understory are particularly vulnerable because mistletoe seeds rain down from above. If you have only a couple of affected trees, you can remove them to prevent the spread (important if you have other hemlocks not yet infected or young understory hemlocks you want to encourage).
Actually, you don’t have to fully remove the tree--you can kill it and leave it in place as an excellent habitat tree (it will be a snag with diverse structures). You do this by girdling the tree. Killing the tree (the host) kills the parasite, so it won’t spread from the dead tree. If you girdle the tree near the base, that will be the point of failure in the future and eventually the whole tree will fall, so consider if this will pose a hazard. Another option is to hire an arborist to girdle the tree higher up, but you would have to prune off all the live branches below that point. This way it will fail up higher, and when that breaks off you still have the bottom portion available as a good wildlife snag.
If you have a lot of hemlock trees and widespread infections, it may not be practical to try to eliminate the mistletoe. You can encourage a shift to non-host species by under-planting (or encouraging natural) Western red cedar seedlings, replanting non-host species after a harvest, or favoring the retention of non-host species when thinning. Otherwise, it’s really nothing to lose sleep over.
Girdling, also called ring barking or ring-barking, is the complete removal of a strip of bark (consisting of cork cambium, phloem, cambium and sometimes going into the xylem) from around the entire circumference of either a branch or trunk of a woody plant. No nutrients can then be transferred down through the phloem layer. It's this severing of the phloem layer that kills the tree by starving the roots.
Snohomish Conservation District | 528 91st Ave NE, Lake Stevens, WA 98258 | 425-335-5634
