Lessons learned far away, close to home
- John Lorson: The Rail Trail Naturalist
- April 16, 2021
- 873
A young Norway spruce spreads its branches in a nursery near the shore of Lake Michigan. Sown in sand, the young tree thrives on leaf compost trucked in by the hundreds of tons to simulate the leaf waste found on a forest floor.
Last week my work life took me far from my well-beaten path through Wayne and Holmes counties as I traveled to Michigan to pick up a load of trees for our annual Holmes Conservation District tree sale.
Even though the sale has been held for as long as anyone can remember, the pickup trip was something new this year. It was driven by necessity. We’ve had an “interesting” time of it the past few years waiting for trees that were beat up in shipping, lost in transit and once even delayed when an April snowstorm socked the nursery under a foot of snow. The staff agreed our best shot at having our trees arrive on time and in good condition would be to have “someone” travel the 350 miles to Holland, Michigan to take possession of the precious cargo and deliver it back to God’s Country the following day. That someone turned out to be me.
Here’s where someone in the crowd yells, “So did you carry all of those trees back on your bicycle.” And while I wouldn’t turn down a chance to ride to the same destination someday — especially if I was being paid for it — the answer is a chuckled “no.” I drove our work pickup pulling a good-sized “toy hauler” trailer — a considerably longer set-up than even the tandem bicycle my wife and I ride, but I somehow managed to bring it all home intact.
I’m sure sometime in my nearly six decades of life I have visited a tree nursery of some sort (likely part of an elementary school field trip back in the day), but doing it now with a mind tuned toward forest ecology, plant nutrition and growth, I had a whole new set of questions.
The nursery is only a mile or so inland from Lake Michigan in the center of an area where people blast fat-tired buggies, four-wheelers and dirt bikes over massive sand dunes for fun. The soil is sand — straight up sand, not a mix of sand, silt and clay, just sand. And yet here were tiny trees, thousands of them — spruce, pine, fir, oak, maple and pretty much any other species you would typically find in a Midwest forested landscape — growing from seed to seedling and sapling to tree in what appeared to me as a field of sand.
My first question was answered without even asking as I saw some of the young trees being plucked from the ground for transplanting. A tree started in sand comes out of the ground very, very easily and with minimal trauma to the roots. That’s one of the things that make this an ideal place for a nursery.
Noting that irrigation structures ran all about the farm, I asked the nursery owner how water availability could be such an issue so close to the lake shore.
“We do get a good amount of rainfall, but you don’t always get what you need when you need it,” he said. “When we start from seed, we water twice a day every day.”
Next came the million-dollar question, the one I just couldn’t figure out.
“What in the world do these trees do for nutrition?” I asked. “I see nothing but fine, clean sand everywhere I look.”
The answer was much simpler than I had anticipated.
“Leaf compost,” he said, “truckload after truckload after truckload of leaf compost. That’s it.”
He went on to explain they prep the seedbeds with the nutrient-filled compost and then “side dress” or add more leaf litter alongside the growing trees as they mature. Beyond water and sunlight, the leaf compost means everything to the young trees.
As a devoted composter, this was music to my ears. I know the difference my “magical” kitchen waste, lawn clippings and leaf litter compost make for my own flowers and vegetables, but I guess I never figured the “big boys” might depend on the same idea for large-scale agriculture. When I got down to thinking about it on the long drive home, however, I realized growing trees in leaf litter is probably the most natural thing ever. That’s exactly where an acorn, walnut or pine cone would find its start in a natural forest setting — covered with last fall’s leaves and needles while resting atop several hundred years’ worth of leaf compost.
Next time you’re out on the trail, take note of where all those beautiful wildflowers are emerging, fiddlehead ferns are unfurling, and the bright leaves of young buckeyes, oaks and maples are beginning to pop. The forest floor is one of the world’s most fertile nurseries. We’d do well to protect it and the life it hosts in any way we can.
Remember, if you have comments on this column or questions about the natural world, write The Rail Trail Naturalist, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email jlorson@alonovus.com.