Thinning & Planting

Field note 260919 · September 19, 2026 Some ideas sound too good to be true. Cut a stick off a native shrub, push it into damp ground, and wait for it to become a shrub. That's live staking. In September I took a class on it at Shonnard's Nursery, sponsored by the Benton Soil and Water Conservation District, and learned that it really is nearly that simple, with a few rules that matter. No pots, no greenhouse, no fuss. Just the right stick, cut the right way, at the right tim

Field note 260819 · August 19, 2026 Some threats arrive with a bang. Emerald ash borer arrives quietly, a small beetle you'll probably never see. It has killed ash trees across much of the country, and it's in Oregon now. As of this August, it hadn't turned up in Benton County. We have Oregon ash along the creek, so I asked an OSU Extension forester what a landowner should do while there's still time. The answer was simpler than I expected: get to know your ash now. Why now W

Field note 260825 · August 25, 2026 Coast redwood keeps coming up as a candidate tree for a warmer western Oregon, and every time it does, I think about the ones I planted on our south side. They didn't make it. So when an OSU Tree School session in August took on growing redwoods and giant sequoia in Oregon, I went in with a personal stake in the answer. What happened here The south-side planting went in under the forest canopy. Within about five years, every one of those tr