What makes the grass greener at "Vineyard Golf Club" ???

“We have a weed here or there,” he said unapologetically.

Image from Vineyard Golf Club

Vineyard Golf Course's Club House

Another incredible example of a large commercial enterprize rejecting the conventionally practiced, science-based, peer-reviewed methods of maintaining a part of the Earth's landscape without the use of synthetic inputs. There was an article in the New York Times back in August of 2010 about a golf course architect  named Jeff Carlson who attempted to do what no one else had really done with regards large commercial golf course installation and maintenance. That was of course a strict organic approach. Here is what the Vineyard Gold Club's website has to say after all this time:

"Today the Vineyard Golf Club stands as a tribute to what can be accomplished through persistence, collaboration and creativity. Working hand in hand with the local regulatory agencies, naturalists and organic experts from around the world, Carlson and the Grounds Team have established, and continue to maintain, what is reputed to be the most environmentally-sensitive golf course in the world."

(Source)

But I loved the actual account as related in the New York Times and I'll repost it here because I find that the Adverstisements and other online junk their pages are rather annoying and who knows how long it will be available to the general public who may not have a subscription to the journal. This seems to be the trend with most former conventional newspapers which are online these days:

EDGARTOWN, Mass. — Standing alongside the 13th green at the Vineyard Golf Club on Martha’s Vineyard, Jeff Carlson spotted a small broadleaf weed between his feet. As the superintendent charged with maintaining the club grounds, he instinctively bent to pluck it, then stopped.

“We have a weed here or there,” he said unapologetically.

It was the rarest acknowledgment in American golf course landscaping — the Vineyard Golf Club is not meant to be as unnaturally perfect as many of the country’s best-known courses.   

Opened eight years ago, the club is thought to be the only completely organic golf course in the United States, its 18 holes groomed without the use of a single synthetic pesticide, fertilizer, herbicide or other artificial chemical treatment.   

“When we started here, some of my peers thought this golf course would be a dust bowl,” Carlson said, walking across a lush, smooth green toward a rolling, verdant fairway. “I admit I wasn’t so sure it could be done myself. People said we were crazy.”

The club has a more prominent endorsement now. The nation’s first golfer, President Obama, is expected to play here while vacationing this month, after playing the course twice last year.

Image From Vineyard Golf Club

Not exactly what most Agro-Chemical critics would admit
when it comes to organically maintained landscaping

With golf courses increasingly being criticized for environmentally unfriendly practices, the Vineyard Golf Club has become a petri dish for alternative maintenance techniques. Carlson has learned to kill weeds with boiling water and a natural foam cocktail and to remove moss with kitchen dish detergent, and he has transported microscopic worms from Iowa to attack turf-ruining grubs. He has disrupted the mating cycle of damaging oriental beetles with a strategically placed scent and has grown grass that he believes is more resistant to disease because it developed without chemicals.   

The staff at the Vineyard Golf Club are now seen as environmental pioneers, with many in the golf industry examining their methods. The club’s organic model could become the successful experiment that helps push thousands of courses toward using fewer pesticides, less water and more natural grass-growing procedures.

“Everyone won’t be able to go fully organic, but we’re proving you can severely cut back on synthetic chemicals,” Carlson said.   

When the Vineyard Golf Club opened, it was the first club in 30 years built on Martha’s Vineyard, where the wealthy, many of them environmentally conscious but also accustomed to playing on chemically enhanced private courses, have long kept summer homes.   

Opposition to the project on this liberal-leaning island was fierce. It helped the project that the land was also zoned for a 148-lot subdivision. The Martha’s Vineyard Commission eventually allowed the course to be built with conditions prohibiting the use of any product whose active ingredient was synthetically produced.   

Bill Wilcox, a water resource planner for the commission, called the club a good neighbor and said he knew of no major complaints against it. 

 Although the club is private, with 288 proprietary members — the initiation fee is $350,000 with annual dues of $12,000 — the deal with the commission includes a condition that 125 island residents be accepted as members with no initiation fee and annual dues of $725.   

Carlson, 61, had experience building a golf course with conservationists watching, having worked with the noted architect Michael Hurdzan during the 1990s in the creation of the Widow’s Walk Golf Course in Scituate, Mass. That course is known as America’s first environmental demonstration course, although it was maintained with some synthetic materials.

“Nobody had tried what we were trying,” Carlson said.   

Cruising the Martha’s Vineyard club on a golf cart last week, Carlson recalled one of his earliest jobs in the business, in which he mixed mercury-based fungicides by hand, occasionally near the on-course house where he lived with his wife, Kathy.

Image from Vineyard Golf Club

“Kathy has beautiful, thick red hair, and it started to fall out,” he said. “She went to the doctor, who did some tests and was told she had heavy-metal poisoning. Obviously, I stopped using that stuff. All these years later, it has been kind of satisfying to be trying something so very different.”

In the golf community, there is no clear definition of what constitutes an organic course. A 79-page report prepared by a consortium of golf and environmental experts proposed definitions earlier this year but did not settle the issue. The report listed about two dozen courses that call themselves organic, but noted that most used some synthetic chemical pesticide, fertilizer or wetting agent.   

“The Vineyard Golf Club has gone further than anyone organically, especially for that level of golf course and considering what they’ve achieved over the years,” said Paul Parker, the chief author of the report.  When Vineyard Golf Club opened in 2002, Carlson was in hand-to-hand combat with fungal diseases, insects, grubs and the skunks, crows and raccoons that tore up the turf to get to the grubs. There was also the matter of teaching the membership that nothing in the rules of golf mandated that the game always be played on green grass.   

“We had to promote the notion of playability rather than visual perfection,” Carlson said.  Still, the grubs were particularly vexing. A synthetic insecticide application would have made things easy. But Carlson discovered a specific kind of beneficial nematode, a roundworm that would attack the grubs from within the soil. It occasionally meant flying in the nematodes from Iowa packed in dry ice.   

When it came to the skunks, crows and raccoons, the club went old school. It turned to a retired local fisherman — whom some have compared to Carl Spackler, the character played by Bill Murray in the golf movie “Caddyshack” — who was known on the island for his ability to trap and remove those creatures.   

Nothing at the Vineyard Golf Club, now in its ninth season, is left to chance. To prevent fungal disease, crews go out daily at dawn using a long, whip-like device that whisks condensation off the grass throughout the course’s 69 acres. And visitors have their shoes cleaned before they play to keep contrary grass seeds or diseases from infiltrating the fairways and greens. 

I've split this paragraph into two parts here above and below, because I'd like to interject my own personal thoughts on what was stated here. I love the fact that they have a large crew here for the hands on maintenance. Clearly it's a lot of work, but enjoyable work just the same. With the 10s of 1000s of dollars not spent on synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, insecticdes and water savings as a result of having extremely thirsty plants because of the over fertility caused by synthetics, they can now hire and pay for more employees. More jobs and safer environment for the whole community.

The club’s maintenance labor budget is higher than those of most clubs its size, but Carlson said his net costs were the same “because of the money we save on traditional pesticides, which are very expensive.”

The Vineyard Golf Club greens are devoid of weeds or major blemishes, and they roll true and consistent. The fairways have patches of crabgrass and clover that are barely noticeable. What is most obvious in a walk of the holes is a striking and scenic layout pocked with deep, distinctive sod-faced bunkers designed by the British architects Donald Steel and Tom Mackenzie.   

“Yes, it is not perfect out there, but even if your ball comes to rest next to a shaved-down broadleaf weed, it’s not going to affect your shot,” said Gene Mulak, the club’s golf pro.

Private golf course members are notoriously hard on superintendents, but Carlson says those at the Vineyard Golf Club are “real environmental pioneers because they put down the money for this experiment.”   

Sally Rorer, a charter member, said members were proud of the club’s organic approach. 

“It makes it easier to put a sandwich down on the ground between shots, too,” she said. 

What practices and techniques might be transferable from Martha’s Vineyard, where golf courses are generally open only eight months a year, to other parts of the country is debatable.

“Most golf courses wouldn’t make it with an approach so organic, especially year after year with changeable weather,” said James Snow, the national director of the United States Golf Association’s Green Section. “But over time, we’re going to be using less synthetics, and that’s a good thing.

These days, walking past the occasional weed, Carlson has moved on to other goals. 

“We’re trying to be like any other golf course,” he said. “I don’t want people to come here and say, ‘That was a real good golf course for an organic golf course.’   

“I hate hearing that.”

(Source - New York Times by Bill Pennington)

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Concluding Comments and Reflection

The beauty of this organic landscape maintenance example is that it is yet another illustration of how a holistic approach through biomimicry [which is replication of Nature] can be successfully implemented with fantastic results on a large commercial scale. This is something the Agro-Chemical and Biotech Corporate business interests say cannot be done with any real serious commercial venture without their help, be it Farming, Urban Landscaping, etc. Here are a couple more examples of big commercial operations [one Farm & one University Campus] who have successfully done what the Vineyard Golf Club has done and the Agro-Chemical industry is livid. Why ??? Because these operations have completely eliminated all synthetic inputs and rely on beneficial bacteria and mycorrhizal fungi colonizing plant roots which provides enhanced water uptake and both nutritional and immune system needs. Mostly it's a change in practice. The first example are the grounds keepers at Harvard Yard who were  severely criticized back in 2009 by the Garden Professors at Washington State University who are often committed to industrial science business interests for no other reasons than the claim of peer-review, scientific consensus and the illusion of a practice of something as science-based. Although to be fair, they do provide some good insight and helpful advise about organic practices, but they are adamantly against compost tea even to the point of putting down some of the efforts of their own fellow colleagues at the Extension Service who actually put on a great well balanced webinar on Compost Tea. 

Here is an article I wrote in response to the WSU Professors  thrashing they spearheaded against the successful Harvard Yard Groundkeepers and their own eXtension colleagues for providing information through a very informative well done webinar on the use, recipes and research being done on compost teas.

WSU Garden Professors attack Harvard Yard Soil Project

Another wonderful example of a commercial venture is a 5,400+ acre farming operation outside of Bismark North Dakota by farmer Gabe Brown who has stopped using synthetic inputs and having fantastic results and like Harvard Yard and Vineyard Golf Club is saving 10s of 1000s of dollars in the process. He manages his land by nurturing the soils mycorrhizal fungi and beneficial bacteria by keeping his fields continually covered with a 20+ biodiverse mix of perennials in pasture [because mycorrhizal fungi needs a continual host], grazing cattle and planting crops all on the same land with a no-till process which leaves the ground micro-organism infrastructure intact instead of killing them with conventional tilling and synthetic chemical inputs. You can watch this video which features Gabe Brown and his Keys To Building a Healthy Soil, filmed on Nov. 18th 2014 at the Idaho Center for Sustainable Agriculture's annual symposium.

Some of the more interesting photos on their website's gallery were these two photos of the sand traps surrounded by what appears to be the low growing native vegetation of their region. This made me think of ways and examples the west coast golf courses could also use many specimens of coastal sage scrub and some high desert plants in the same ways. There was one paragraph which seemed to sum up what other varied geograpphically located golf courses could do to incorporate many of Vineyatd's ideas, but also specifically tailor them to their own region. This is important not only from a maintenance perspective, but also a localized ecological one which enhances the natural ecological habitats within any given locality. Here are those pics below.

Image from Vineyard Golf Club

Image from Vineyard Golf Club

I love those pics. For me they are illustrative of the mountain high terrain in eastern San Diego County in California where such application could be implemented at another golf resort called Warner Spring Ranch Resort . For that matter all of the other golf courses of Southern California, including those of the deserts southwest could follow this example since an organic approach which utilizes and encourages micro-organisms allow less water to be used, something that is a rare and expensive commodity out there. And this is irrelevant whether the water comes from an effluent gray water source. Take a look at some example photos below of the Warner Ranch Resort golf course.

Image from Warner Spring Ranch Resort

The photo above here reveals the non-native trees and shrubs first  by the previous ranch developers decades ago. This was always the practice way back then by not only developers, but also land owners of the high elevation country. People move in from the cities and bring with them their favourite plants purchased at the conventional retail nurseries. They most often are not a good fit and if they do survive at all, they are not long lived and often stunted in growth. But today there are more Native Plant Nurseries for places like San Diego county which offer a huge choice of better suited attractive native ornamental plants for this drier environment located at the edge of the Anza Borrego Desert which almost take care of themselves under the right microbial soil conditions. The trees and shrubs the ranch has now have higher water requirements. The southwestern natives on the other hand generally have much deeper root systems and actually resent the massive amounts of water generally supplied on conventionally maintained golf courses. Take as an example the native oak trees below which are experiencing severe die off of their branches. Without any forethought decades ago when plans were architected and being developed, the course was mapped out to weave in and out of existing majestic oak specimens. But giant oaks resent a constant supply of water all the way up to their trunks. Take a look at the major decline and die off of foliage below.

Image from Warner Springs Ranch Resort

Again, as above, the photo below shows, the native California Live Oaks struggle under the golf course's wet grass conditions where the grass actually grows righ up to the trunks of the trees and the foliage declines as a result. The native majestic looking Fremont Cottonwoods and California Sycamores they have left are doing fine, but that is because they are water loving riparian trees. But I also like that they have left in the back in the photo below large patches of the attrctive native Silver Sagebrush. This allows a mycorrhizal system to remain intact and a buffer to weeds taking over had they removed them as a fire break which would create a bacterial system favouring ruderal plants which are non-mycorrhizal. Even many pines do not take so well  to the continual wetness of the lawn environment needed for the course. Please keep in mind here that I really can only speak from a southwestern ecosystem perspective and other regional ecosystems around the globe will all have their own unique ecological fine tuning, even though the basic fundamentals and principles are the same.

Image from Warner Springs Ranch Resort

Successful organic landscape examples on a commercial scale are desperately needed in a world where the prevailing Scientific Orthodoxy insists we need the Biotechs & Agro-Chemical comapnies if the world is going to survive. And they have the world's power and wealth to back up their claims. Truth be said, it is these very same companies from their earliest origins at the beginning o the 20th Century who have literally dismantled and reverse engineered the Earth by means of abuse and misuse of Science. Clearly, their are other scientific studies and ecologically minded organizations which time and again have proven the industrial science business model to be dead wrong. But one of the greatest allies the Industrial Science world has on it's side when t comes to propaganda storytelling is the global Media. Recently there was an article explaining why and how this major gray area journalism culture operates. The article's title is, "Is Most Science News Bull****?"

http://primemind.com/articles/is-most-science-news-bull****?

"If we want to live our lives based on evidence (and who doesn’t?), it makes intuitive sense to live according to what we read in the science section of the newspaper. First things first, don’t do that. Newspapers are actually one of the worst places to get information about scientific matters. Now this isn’t some kind of revelation. Anyone with a good understanding of science knows this is as clear as night and day."

Unfortunately the media is where most average people get their science education and understanding. Today's modern society living in a further and further dismantled world where life seems to have less and less purpose are for the most part apathetic. Like the old time religion of the past, most people are lazy and allow the prevailing ruling Scientific Orthodoxy to do their scientific study, research and thinking for them. That article further explained why journalists are not more honest and thorough in producing a well balanced and well thought out educational reads. 

"This is because a well-considered and balanced article is not only time consuming and challenging to write, but ultimately sells less copies, brings in less traffic, and consequently less advertising dollars than shock-horror headlines. All journalists who want to tell substantive, well-researched stories face this problem."

Humans under the failed leadership of political, Commercial & Religious elements have gradually dismantled this planet's life sustaining natural systems which has been accelerated since World War I thanks to the misuse and abuses of science. Quite literally our Earth (Home) has been trashed and abused for it's natural resources to such a degree that many parts are becoming unlivable. Hence the migration of people to the prosperous industrial countries. And yet very few are taking not. This question begs, Why is the average human content with living in a home in an ever growing homeless world ?

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Some Interesting References

New York Times: Exclusive Golf Course Is Organic, So Weeds Get In

New York Times: The Grass Is Greener at Harvard

Brown's Ranch: Regenerating Landscaoes for a Sustainable Future

https://www.warnerspringsranchresort.com/championship-golf.html

Reclaimed Water: Municipal Projects, CalTrans Landscaping & Pompous Grass Resorts

In Pursuit of the Perfect Lawn (& Why I've always hated Lawns as a Landscaper) 

Native Plants, Micro-Organisms & Habitat Building Resources for creating commercial Ecological Habitats through Biomimicry

California Chaparral Institute

Las Pilitas Native California Plants Nursery

Tree of Life Native Plants Nursery

Mycorrhizal Applications Inc

Lebanon Turf & Biologicals

http://www.valentbiosciences.com

Some Great News in the Biological Controls Research & Development Department

The article in Entomology Today dealt with grub issues in the lawns that the Vinetard Groundskeepers had to deal with. Here is the latest from the online journal Entomology Today on potential biological controls:

Journal of Integrated Pest Management (JIPM) Article on Masked Chafer Grubs in Turfgrass Explains Management Techniques

Credit Entomological Society of America

Most people are more familiar with the larval form of masked chafers,
like the one shown here. Often called “white grubs,” these
cream-colored and brown-headed larvae can grow to an inch long and
 are typically discovered in the soil lying in a characteristic C-shape.

Should Firefighters be expected to save Homes which are located in fire trap geography and where the owner cared less about landscape hygiene ?

Image: NBC San Diego

The above photo was taken up in the Coronado Hills above San Marcos back in the middle of May 2014 when the Cocos Fire erupted during one of the earliest heat waves driven by abnormal unseasonal Santa Ana Winds. I actually watched this fire creep up to this place on the Live News from NBC's helicopter. In the beginning, there was only a small spot fire, but it was headed towards these dead Aleppo Pines which the owner didn't bother to chop down. These trees went up like giant Roman Candles and from the vantage point of the helicopter, you could see 1000s of embers breaking free from these dead dried Aleppo Pines which exploded high up into the air spreading spot fires on both sides of this house & beyond that is pictured there behind the fire. These trees actually made the fire worse and prolonged it's life at the risk to firefighters on the ground. From the live News feeds you could see there were firefighters up around the driveway next to the house at the top, which is not surprising since heroics is part of most firefighter's nature anyway. But fortunately their commanders who had a better vantage point to survey the conditions ordered them to get out of there quickly. Luckily the house at the top of the hill was spared, but not the one closest to those trees. It should also be noted that there are some situations where homes with vast amounts of acreage that have home owners who clearly could have cared less about their landscape's lack of hygiene or landscape neatness which deserve to be left to chance. So should anyone consider such  properties really worth any firefighter's life for the sake of saving  material possessions ? Personally I say no. There is a vast difference in putting one's life on the line for them personally or saving their possessions. Houses can be replaced, but a firefighter who is a father, mother, son, daughter, friend etc cannot be replaced. This wasn't the only poor example up in those hills either, but it's an outstanding example of what I mean. For example, I saw multiple disease infested Oleander hedge rows used as a privacy barrier to outsiders which were mostly brown and dead. This phenomena with Oleanders isn't new. The blight attacking them has been spreading for years in Southern California, even Cal Trans has removed many median hedge barriers. Take the example below which as it was a couple years ago. Today it is almost totally yellow/brown & dead.

Google Earth

This photo from Google Earth is at the end of my mother's street across from Pepper Drive School in El Cajon California. This is at the foot of Rattlesnake Mountain. I neglected to take a photo on the very day we came back to Sweden the first week of July 2014, but not only is this exact same hedge almost totally brown and dead, but foxtail grasses which have been mowed down in the above photo, are two foot high leading clear up to this same hedge which is now almost totally dead. Now this location is an easier defensive position, but many places with such flammable landscape components in many remote property areas are in more fire trap locations where homes should have been allowed to be built in the first place. Of course never underestimate the power of future tax revenues when permits are issued. Now take a fast look at another fire which burned down in Lakeside at the very same week as the Cocos & Carlsbad Fires.

Image by Billy Ortiz Lakeside California Old Hwy 80 & Aurora Drive

When my wife and I flew into Southern California, we came during a period of intense heat and Santa Ana winds which are more characteristic of Sept/Oct/Nov. San Marcos, Carlsbad, Rancho Bernardo and Camp Pendleton were raging with fires. But a much smaller fire exploded further down south in Lakeside near old Hwy 80 & Los Coches Road. Oddly enough, I wrote exactly about this very spot where numerous dead and dying Eucalyptus could be found everywhere and the potential for future wildfire catastrophe. Low and behold lookie how accurate that prophecy came true. I wrote about this exact location back on May 29th, 2013 of last year and the issues regarding Red Gum Lerp infested Eucalyptus which seem to be everywhere and nobody taking any notice or actions to remove them. This would also include the San Diego Safari Park in Escondido: 

It's the Lerp Psyllid's fault ? So ? And ? (Nature takes the hit again in blame game) 

Image: Billy Ortiz - Fire along old Hwy 80 & Aurora Drive May 2014

Here again above is the wildfire as photographed by Billy Ortiz of Lakeside/El Cajon. Below here I drove by and took photos of the wildfire's aftermath. Both sides of the Highway were burned which means embers easily made it to the other side no doubt helped by winds burning dead Eucalyptus branches and twigs which exploded when the fire torched them. The very tall dead eucalyptus seen in Billy Ortiz's photo no doubt facilitated the fire's spread when it exploded into the atmosphere and carried along by the unseasonal Santa Ana Winds at that time of year. Fortunately they got the fire out, but it could have been much worse.

Photo Mine

Highway Eight Business Route, olde 80 & Aurora Drive

Photo Mine

This is the east side of old Highway route 80

Photo Mine

These next two photos are of the west side of
Old Hwy Route 80

Photo Mime

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Now Back to Coronado Hills & the Landscape

My Son and other family members of mine have a house up in those Coronado Hills on Cycad Drive which was very much in the News. In fact, their house specifically was the focus of attention on the News during this firestorm. They lost three sheds, a truck, their  gazebo, and the back eve's of the house were burnt. Below is a News 8 team's 4:00 minute video of the fire moving up the opposite side of the canyon where the camera vantage point was right on Coronado Hills drive on the west side. The fire moves right up through their backyard which is on the east side of this heavily vegetated Canyon. Oddly enough, they did have a considerable firebreak on the north and west sides, but the neighbour to the south had a huge forest of giant Bamboo, which by the way has sprung back to life.

 From the very start of the video above to the 30 second mark, you can actually see the Coulter Pine my Son and I planted over a decade ago and I've written about in the past. The Cocos Fire never really burned the tree, as we had a lot of clearance right down to the bare soil all around this tree. But it took everything else around that tree. The tree itself was scorched by the intense heat. Like the tree, the house was miraculously spared with only the interior window blinds being melted inside, along with some exterior roofing. If you look very closely at the photo below here of the branch end tips, they still have life in them and are green. This happened in the 1982 with many of the Jeffrey and Coulter pine in the Mountain Center Fire. Many trees which looked dead were merely experiencing needle scorch. They sprang back to life and today a younger forest which was helped along by chaparral that was left intact and not interfered with for doing it's job of Sapling encouragement. Notice the green interior of the pine bud above ? Now look below at the branch ends of the young scorched Coulter Pine.

Image Mine

Image - J Santino 2013

Once again, the photo above here is of the Coulter Pine that by all appearances and logic seems a lost cause. But take closer note of the still viable greeen bud material at all the tips. This tree was not so much burned as heat scortched. Here on the right is what this Coulter Pine looked like when I photographed it in 2013, one year prior to this fire in the Spring of 2014. But after the intense heat of the Cocos Wildfire up that canyon where Coronado Hills Drive winds back and forth on the other side, the brown needles appear to signal the death knell for this young Coulter. But all is not lost as I've just updates a year later from a photograph I received from the property owner here below. One big mstake many people make is immediate removal of all dead looking material in the landscape, but be patient for a few months and see what and where plants sprout back to life.

 Brilliant Update May 11, 2015 Coulter Pine Survival Status

Photo - Jeannette Santino (2015)

Never ever underestimate the power of life regeneration after fire when conventional wisdom convinces you all is lost. Now take a close look at some other interesting feature plant components within their landscape. For example, most folks here know of or have at least seen Sea Fig which has naturalized down along the SoCal beach coastlines or commonly used along SoCal Freeways. We also call them iceplant and they seem like such a perfect fit in a wildfire prone area's landscape. You may need to rethink that.

Image Mine

The above photo is of what use to be the bank's Sea Fig Ice Plant which burned like anything else on the property. In fact the immediate garden or landscape was surrounded by massive amounts of this plant which skirted the entire canyon side of the landscape. While it has the appearance of being the prefect fire barrier for it's seeming water storage capacity, what most folks don't often realize about all ice plants is that they have a heavy dead thatch building up underneath their top green exterior. I cannot find the News video, but one News outlet was showing firefighters during mopping up operations on some properties which had smoking and smoldering ice plant which had heavy thatch underneath the seeming protective mass of green water storage plants. Nothing is a guarantee if weather conditions are right. He are some more shots of the Sea Fig below.

Photo Mine

Looking west from property across
the canyon at Coronado Hills Drive

Photo Mine

Take a close look at these next two photographs below here. Both are of two different locations in their front yard which wasn't at all a part of the direct hit frontal attack from the fire coming up the canyon, but there were spot fires from embers. This is where landscape tidiness is imperative, but not always a guarantee. It's just the way things are. Blowing sparks and embers can find their way anywhere.

Photo Mine

Both of these photos tell a story of fire defense spaces. The one above was where a Manzanita with the usual amount of natural dander [mulch] underneath it branches once stood. Now I like dander underneath my native landscape plants, that's the way things work in Nature, but fire will find these spots and ignite a fire, just so you know. The other one below has succulents which had their own version of dead older leaves and thatch underneath. The main reason you'd never take notice of such older dead material is because the overall top cover was always pretty and green to the eye. It mirrors the very same deceptive problems common with the Ice Plant banks. But where ever dead thatch is present, wind blown embers are sure to find. BTW the homeowners mentioned in the property above did have a well maintained clean landscape, but nothing is a guarantee when it comes to poor location.

Photo Mine

Below here now is another interesting example of a landscape tree in the same neighbourhood which looks to have been enveloped by the intense heat which turned the needles brown like the Coulter Pine in the backyard. You can tell that the fire never actually touched this tree, otherwise we wouldn't be viewing anything in the way of pine needles now. In actual fact I have been told that this tree is still alive and well, although it's tough to view it that way from this photo. Canary Island pines are tough and one of the few to sprout back from the truck and branches after going through a forest fire. But fire prone areas even on the Canary Island are what this tree is adapted well to. I love Canary Island Pines, in fact so much that I traveled to the Canary Islands to see them in their natural habitat to see and view just how they live. Incredibly as tough & drought resistant as they are, I don't think I'd recommend them for rural properties with wildfire hazard potential. The main reason is that of all pines I have ever dealt with, they are the most intense producers of Pine Straw thatch on the ground below themselves. Their pine straw also completely coats and smothers other shrubs underneath them which makes those plants more prone to catching fire.

Photo Mine

When I was landscape head gardener in San Diego, we had numerous Canary Island Pines around the pool and clubhouse area. It was an almost daily chore to deal with the massive amounts of needles that were shed almost every single day. Below gives you an idea of the overwhelming task of maintaining under these Canary Island Pine trees. And yet I admire them greatly. They are beautiful and tough survivors and if you don't mind the regular maintenance, then by all means utilize them in your landscape. But be forewarned of their fire encouraging potential if you don't clean up after them. 

Brilliant Update - March 2015 Canary Island Pine Survival Status

Photo - Jeannette Santino (2015)

Once again, this homeowner was in a hurry to clean up. They assumed the this Canary Island Pine was a lost cause. Under normal circumstances with many trees and shrubs, this might be true, but almost never with this species of pine tree. Now the tree has been sadly topped and for no good reasons than mere assumptions. The only winner here was the tree trimming company who made out like a bandit with the cash.

David Lange, Santa Barbara California

Below here is my trip to the Canary Island of Tenerife. The photograph was taken inside the ancient super volcanic caldera which collapsed in on itself and formed this massive several miles across in diameter enclosed valley. A later pyramid shaped volcano developed and is actually to the right, but out of the picture below. What fascinated me is the almost absence of any other shrubs on the slopes with the exception of this tree in pure stands. The forest floor under these trees was heavily littered with Canary Island pine needles which was extremely dense and thick. They tend to cover up and soften the geological ruggedness of the fractured volcanic soil landscape which then better allows for rain to soak in and percolate. Very little run off here from what I observed with no riparian vegetation that I could ever see in most of the washes and canyons on the island. When I maintained the landscape at the Mobile Home Park in El Cajon which was one of the properties our company maintained, it was always a chore to clean up needles off of all the shrubs and even within the entire Chainlink fencing which surrounded the pool deck area. This alone should give clues as to the present danger of fire ignition possibilities when maintenance lacks around these trees. Again, I'm not against Canary Island Pines, but Just Say'in.

Photo Mine (Tenerife 2012)

image mine: 2014 SD Safari Park

My favourite Pine for the rural landscape would be a Torrey Pine over a Canary Island Pine. The reason is they don't have as dense a needles production and their heavier needle bundles will fall through Chaparral easier than the lighter longer Canary Island Pine needles which will float and land on top of the shrub. When they are young they will tend to be long and leggy as you see here in the photograph I took of a staked young Torrey Pine at the San Diego Safari Park near Escondido. In the wild it's the large Chaparral Scrub which not only provides and nurtures these trees with water and nutrients, but also provide them with the natural mechanical staking that we do otherwise in our urban landscapes artificially with wooden or steel posts and ties. From a moderate to light wildfire perspective, they could endure much better because they have a much cleaner smoother bark and trunk than many other pines and they'll merely shed their lower branches with any heat or smoke damage. The smoke and heat even further prunes them naturally into a more clean streamlined tall look far above the ground. I had an experience with this in the photograph below when I lived up in Anza California. Those are the first Torrey Pines I planted back in 1986.

Photo Mine

Torrey Pines - Anza California, Burnt Valley Road

When the four Torrey Pines were as tall as the one pictured in the Safari Park photo above, there was a rather large Hedgehog Cactus at the bottom of this back below where that was is now. There were foxtail grasses which were only 5 or 6 inches high, but they had grown into the cactus spines and it was a tedious stickery job to get them out. Thinking I had a clever idea [please do not try this stupid dumb stunt at home], I decided one late night after the neighbourhood was in bed, to strike a match and take care of the foxtails cleanly. Didn't happen. The long large spines of the cactus caught fire, created a rather large high flame which in turn created it's own powerful stiff breeze which swished the lower Torrey Pine branches back and forth till it finally died down. The next morning I came out and found the cactus a total loss and though the Torrey Pine branches didn't burn, they did turn brown. Eventually those lower branches never came back and actually died. I had to prune them. Not all chaparral fires burn up through the Scrub canopy. Many small fires if conditions are right will burn the undergrowth only. I saw this several times in Anza where the weather conditions with high humidity and little wind allowed lightning fires to only burn chaparral understory. Even still, maintenance is a must for fire protection and defensible space and everyone in the rural areas should get this. 

Further Update: Monday 25, August 2014

The headlines everywhere read, "Small Actions can Reduce Wildfire Risks" and along with it the latest favourite poster child photo of a house that escaped because of it's landscaping. Well, that's only partially correct. Wind direction and luck played a bigger role.

AP File Photo Taylor Bridge Fire

USA Today

Lately there has been a reemergence of a double before and after photograph [above] of a house on a hillside above Bettas Road near Cle Elum Washington during the Taylor Bridge Fire which doesn't exactly tell the whole. The upper photo shows a roaring fire about ready to pounce on a helpless looking house. The lower photo gives the impression that the clever smart landscaping of the homeowners is what saved the day. The lower photo shows a completely blackened area which that raging fire consumed all around the home. While the landscaping was fairly clean and neat, those pictures and the story told in the articles don't reveal or expose the truth of the matter. You see, all but one [USA Today] news journal left out another important photo which reveals the fire wasn't as bad as first photographed. It was burning down hill and against the wind direction. The photo at the above right here shows a completely subdued slow moving fire with no firetrucks or firemen saving the day. What saved this house was the weather conditions more than anything else. Believe it or not I actually wrote about this exact fire and the circumstances back in August 2012 and yet still the incomplete story still prevails today:

Modern Day Megafires: Understanding Some Basic Fundamentals for Survival

In summing up, there are a couple of things rural homeowners need to come to grips with here. First, if you choose a high profile view lot, then you have chosen a wildfire magnet which wants to drive uphill. That's the nature of what most all fires will do. It's called physics. Fires thrive on defying gravity. You should also chose a property that is not a fire trap. The photo to the right here is in San Diego County California and is located behind the Sheriff Sub-Station on San Felipe Road or S-2. It has an impossible access with no escape route. I asked my brother in nearby Ranchita about this lot and nobody seems to know what they owners has in mind here.  If the person chooses to build and  to live here, then they should  be prepared to accept the financial property loss consequences and do NOT expect firefighters to be heroes and save your dream home by quite possibly sacrificing their lives literally. Many will try and save it anyway, because that's in their nature to rescue people and their material possessions. But j just don't take advantage of this. Even on my property in Anza, I always knew being at the top of a knoll with a fantastic 180 degree view also brought inevitable consequences which I accepted. Also, you need to understand there is no such thing as fire resistant landscapes. Everything organic under the right conditions will burn. Some do have more volatile oils than others, but everything burns, even the cryptonite immune ice plant on steroids burns. In southern California I have always found the Natives do the best under the climate conditions that exist there. Many non-natives will stress and partially die at best without constant water availability. But mostly you will have to accept the inevitable when and where you choose to live. With climate change and urban environments, there is no guarantee as we have seen on the News.

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Update August 25, 2014

Lincoln Bramwell, US Forest Service Historian: “Wilderburbs: Communities on Nature’s Edge”

http://www.nhbs.com/wilderburbs_communities_on_natures_edge_tefno_199783.html

Cottonwoods ? Give me one of those "cottonless" Cottonwoods over a Fremont any day!

This was the usual attitude I found when discussing plants in landscapes up in Anza California by new land owners moving up from the cities. People in general by their very Nature are impatient when it comes to landscaping and they want instant landscapes NOW, not what they perceive as being years or decades on down the road. Species of Populus are widely used in landscapes – especially when fast growth is desired. Most of these are hybrids and most often they are so-called “cottonless” Cottonwoods. These are male clones selected because they do not produce the cottony seeds that become a nuisance. I also believe their origin is from back east as they do not have the same characteristics [bark, leaf, or even silhouette patterns] as the western natives like Fremont. Keep in mind that I'm not saying here that they are a great choice for residential landscapes – they are not. In many ways, I think that are a bad choice because their water requirements are much greater than natives, especially when older. These "cottonless" varieties of  cottonwoods can become very large when grown in or near a perennial water source. When young, they often perform well in irrigated landscapes. This is why they are preferred. Over time, they usually outgrow the irrigation system and begin to die back or succumb to disease. I have rarely seen large cottonwoods that have survived longer than 12 or 15 years in a landscape unless they have a creek, river, or septic system to sustain them. When regularly flood irrigated, they will grow and survive, but most drip systems [typical for Anza] will not provide adequate irrigation. Their roots are also extremely aggressive like the one in my former front yard had roots over 100' away clearly on the other side of the home. So anybody can be successful with them that first decade, but it's that time afterward when these giant trees have much greater water requirements especially in drier climates like Anza CA. 

Photo: Mine

Göteborg Botanical Gardens Spring 2013

But that takes me now to the biggest complaint against the native Fremont Cottonwood which admittedly does have a cottony seed, but only the size of a Dandelion. It's a minor inconvenience to live with for selecting a better choice for cottonwood which will have deeper roots and be a tougher survivor as compare to the back east hybrid which is not really that long lived by comparison. Up in Idyllwild, folks will complain about the Pines dropping pollen everywhere. Seriously no one would suggest getting rid of them in favour of neater choices. ALL Landscapes have maintenance issues. But this brings me to my recent visit a couple of weeks ago the Göteborg Botanical Gardens. There was a tree there that I really never noticed before or paid any attention to it being a Cottonwood. I supposed I always missed it because I came at the wrong time of year before or after it bloom, but here it is below. It is Populus wilsonii and is from central China in Asia.

This was enough to make anyone do a double take.  This stuff was everywhere. It was undeniable what this tree was and reminds me of something I've never forgotten when it comes to plant identity, although while the origin of this saying did have to do with plants, it was used illustratively in identifying the type of person we run across in life. 

 "By their fruits you will recognize them" Matthew 7:16  

Believe it or not, when I'm stumped out in the field and having a difficult time identifying plant which looks familiar, but has familiar shapes or patterns to something else, I actually look for fruits, nuts or other seeds. So the old saying of "by their fruits you will know them" holds an element of field working merit. While there are many type of plants, within the same group there will always be similar characteristics or identifying marks and patterns in the fruit they produce. Of course there are always exceptions, but still it makes things a fun challenge.

Photo: Mine

Here is a view from underneath the Cottonwood's canopy looking up towards the sky. These large cotton balls are so unmistakable and hard to miss. Wonder why I never paid any mind before ? Oh yeah that's right, I was always there in  the middle of deep summer.

Here is a much closer zoomed in shot to give you an idea of the size of these cotton balls. The leaves also are far more bigger than what most folks are use to seeing over in the States with the Native Fremont Cottonwood (Populus fremontii). The size of the cotton balls in this tree were huge and in some cases bigger than any actual cotton boll I've ever encountered in a Texas Farmer's field when I stopped along the roadside for the first time in my life encountering them. It was incredible stand under this tree and gazing up at some so unbelievable. And to think, if I had come at another moment as times past, I would have missed all of things and never paid the tree any mind as I had in the past. Funny, I never once when passing this tree ever glimpsed at the identification sign below it to find out what it was. I'll always pay close attention now and be sire to come back at the right time of year. *smile* 

Photo: Mine

And finally to give a better sense of scale for this trees leaves and the size of those large cotton balls, here is my hand lowering down a branch a bit for a closer shot. Looking at the size of these things, I wondered if anyone historically attempted to utilize these cotton bolls the same way we use the conventional cotton plant.

Photo: Mine

Anyone find this incredibly enlightening and educational ? I did.  Fremont Cottonwoods (Populus fremontii) don't really look half bad now do they ? This photo was taken in middle May 2013 in the San Jacinto Valley just north of the town of San Jacinto on what I presume is State Street or old Hwy 79. That sign is an indication you are approaching the San Jacinto River bridge to the Jct of turning right to Soboba Rd heading towards the Indian Casino or left onto Gilman Springs Rd towards Moreno Valley or north to Beaumont. The entire area was once a massive miles long and wide Cottonwood and California Sycamore Forested Savanna with most likely other trees like Arizona Ash which actually have heavy woodlands further upstream in Bee Canyon which is a tributary to the east. The natural world Juan Bautista de Anza saw in the Spring of 1774 & once again in 1775 must have been at it's peak in pristine condition must have been ever so beautiful.