Ready for Rain, Acorn Plantings, and a New Native Forest

About 13 acres of newly cleared Peninsula Watershed land are slated for acorn plantings, with a healthy young oak forest to follow. 

Protective 6-foot tubing 

The small green flags you see in the top photo mark the sites for the upcoming plantings by hand. There will be one acorn for each 1- to 2-inch hole, spaced about 15 feet apart. We’ll insert a tall, 6-foot tube over each to help the young seedlings grow straight and strong, while safeguarding them from deer, rodents and other wildlife. 

The acorns will come from existing mature watershed oaks, and they’ll be nurtured in a nursery for about a month before the December planting. Irrigation pipes are already in, and we’re also ready for rain with straw-filled fiber rolls. The fiber rolls slow stormwater runoff and trap the sediment away from creeks, drainages and the reservoir. 

Irrigation piping and fiber rolls. 

Just next to the future new woodland, we also recently converted about 60 acres of land to grasslands, a wetland, and a creek.  

The two adjoining projects follow a recent clearing of large stands of invasive non-native trees in the same area. The work is part of an extensive Habitat Restoration Project to bring back about 180 acres of native grass, woodland and wetland at several different Peninsula Watershed locations. The historic habitats provide essential food and shelter for a variety of native plant, butterfly, bird and other wildlife species (some found nowhere else in California).