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hello and thank you for
listening to my presentation today. My name is Scott Lucas
and I would like to describe the planting protocols
which we've determined throough our research projects
and through our experience growing native hawaiian akiaki grass
now like to thank the Hawaii Department of Transportation
the University of Hawaii and the USDA
NRCS plant materials center on molokai for all their support for this project
so first off like to begin by
just mentioning and describing why we want native species or vegetation
and why we're interested in reestablishing natives on roadways and
in landscapes
there are numerous ecosystem benefits associated with these plantings
which I'll highlight a few here in the slide one being that
the restoration of native species helps restore native habitat
and this could be as simple as restoring native soil chemistry
all the way to you restoring these ancient
partnerships as you see in the slide below with the
Native Hawaiian honey creeper and the native will be Leah
these in the these native species are also typically more adapted to
local environments then their invasive counterparts and this is because the
native species have
evolved to this specific environment here in Hawaii for thousands of years
whereas their invasive counterparts as saying
we're just brought in and establish rapidly and also
putting these native species along roadways helps mitigate the spread of
invasive
and noxious weeds roadways as you see in the picture below here on the Big Island
are well-established corridors have invasive seeds spread
and you see a long this roadside is completely flanked with
invasive fountain grass so were able to
established native grass species along this road
these road corridors we can help cut down this invasive seeds spread
and also these native species are attractive looking
and they beautify our landscapes and our roadways so specifically for
the species were working with its problems for genesis
in Hawaiian its akiaki this species is commonly found
on the coastal salt marsh areas around all the main Hawaiian Islands
you see in the illustration on the lower left that this
species and the standard species in particular grows right above the high
water mark
along the beaches and with this you can imagine the level of salt that's in that
soil or in that sands medium so the species has a high tolerance to salt
and also high drought tolerance as these areas can sometimes be fairly dry
so a little background about akiaki
and the site also serves as some what of an overview
of how this presentation is going to go and the topics that we're going to be
covering
so you see in the middle this species of akiaki does produce seed heads
but the seed is a very low seed viability so do you
mitigate this we have to use a vegetative
propagated on stem cutting planting protocol
because if you try to use direct seeds with the low seed viability
you won't have any success in the planting so with the cut stems
as you see on the right hand side to this screen we lay those on are planting
plots
and cover them with a hydro mulch cap
which contains pre-emergent herbicides and we had a pre-emergent herbicides
into this mixture
because it's absolutely imperative to factor in the weed pressure
during the planting process so the first step
of six which I'm gonna highlight here is the handling of the plant material
so firstly we need to locate a source of live akiaki plants
and along with locating the source you have to make sure you able to harvest
from the source
you don't want to be able to or you cannot harvest from
say a private landowners private yard or
some state or public land you have to have appropriate permissions to go
harvest these
planting sites and along with the
location at the site you also want to make sure that you try to
find a site with almost pure akiaki one with
very few weeds that are present because you don't want to be harvesting the
material and transporting weeds back to your planting site
so once you found a site that you can harvest from and the site is
relatively weed free
you should provide water and fertilization for about a month period
so your able to you insure that this site is actively growing
and your fresh green shoots on your aki aki stand
and this will really help the establishment
of the species opposed to a stand of akiaki
that is not actively growing and comprised of mainly
dormant materials then you cut the
above-ground green stems at a length of
18 to 24 inches in height and this is to ensure that you have
adequate rooting nodes at which the initiation of the roots
begins. For an acre of planting you're gonna need about
eleven hundred pounds of fresh stems and this seems like a lot but actually when
you spread them over the planting area
it seems to be a fairly a sparse planting
but its adequate for purposes of re vegetation
and when you do the harvesting you wanna make sure you using a very sharp
implement
we used a sharp hand sickle because we're using a smaller plot
but if you were doing a large area such as an acre where you need
eleven hundred pounds of material you want to come in with some sort of mechanized
tool
such as a sickle bar or a hand-held sickle bar
or a walk behind sickle bar you definitely don't want to use
some kind of Trim weed eater or flail mower
because that will damage your stock material
you wanna make sure your cuts are clean an able to heal rapidly
and are even
so after you cut the stems you need to soak them
for a 24-hour period to maximize the ruling potential
you'll be soaking the stems in a dilution
the dipping grow in water at a rate of one part dipping grow
to 35 parts of water
so an example here for 100 gallon tank you'd put 2.8 gallons of
dipping grow rooting hormone in to a 100 gallon tank of water
this will give you your one part to 35 parts ratio
then you need to you submerge your cut stems completely
in this rooting hormone solution for a period of 24 hours
and you see in the lower left hand illustration we have our
rooting tanks with our stems in it covered with a layer of expanded metal
weighed down with a brick and this is to ensure that we have complete
submersion
of all of the stems if you don't put some kind of top on it or something
downward force the stems are all gonna be floating and
will be exposed to the air
so after you complete your 24 hour soaking period
you remove your stems from the dipping grow and place them on the planting
surface
before you place them on the ground you wanna make sure that
the soil surface is pre moistened
if you put your fresh stems on a dry surface
it will draw the moisture out of the stems and leave you with desiccated plant material
so you want to be sure that you have a pre moistened
planting surface when you lay those stems down
we're gonna be planting at a rate of 25 pounds
of the akiaki stems over a thousand square foot area
and this equals eleven hundred pounds per acre planting rate which I mentioned
earlier
when you lay the stems down you want to ensure that
you get as much contact with the soil as possible
because the stems that are protruding upwards or not contacting the soil surface
will not have proper root initiation through the nodes
and the lower left-hand side you see with the visual representation
of what the planting rate looks like and also
a similar picture on the right side is our experimental plots
although this is broken up into a number of
separate individual treatments and plots
you can still get an idea of what this would look like if it were to be
an entire field covered in this planting rate
so now that we have the planted the stems laid on the planting surface
we're able to come in and cover with the hydro mulch cap
I'm gonna give you the rates for
the amount of components needed for a 100 gallon batch
so in this 100 gallon batch there are three main components:
for a hydro much mixture: paper, straw, and tackafier.
first off you'll need 15.7 pounds
of hydro mulch paper for 100 gallon tank
and we use nature's own organic paper and this is basically just
shredded, thinly shredded paper with a bluish green dye to it
and this is the common look that you see when you see a freshly hydro seeded
Hydra mulched
re vegetation project it has the green appearance
and this is where you getting that that look from
secondly we used hydro straw trial which is basically
a finally cut straw and we're gonna be adding fourteen-point three-pounds
of straw
into that 100 gallon mixture and also
you need the tackifier which when dried on the planting service
acts as some sort somewhat of a glue
but while in the hydro mulch tank it acts as a lubricant
and this you'll be adding .15 pounds
so as I said those are the three main components: within
and comprising the hydo Mulch mixture
the great thing about the Hydro Mulch is that it holds those stems that we laid
down
to the planting surface but it also can be a carrier for additional components
to aide in your planting process
in this specific planting protocol with akiaki
we add an additional half a pound a fertilizer
into the Hydro mulch tank to provide nutrients for our
akiaki stand along with the fertilizer
we add a pre-emergent herbicide ronstar 2 G
in the granular formulation at a hundred pounds per acre
and this is imperative because it's this pre-emergent herbicide
which is gonna give you the weed control and eliminate the competition for your
native Hawaiian grass. The active ingredient in the ronstar is a two percent
oxadiazon
here in the picture on the right hand side this is one of our small-scale
hydro mulching
on systems in which you see a pump
driven by a Honda Motor which is connected to a manifold
that allows for reducing
and a strengthening the agitation within the tank
and also reducing or restricting the flow
to the nozzle in which applying
Here in this picture we're using the nozzle to help advocate this mix
and thoroughly blend it because you're adding
the dry paper, the dry straw, dry fertilizer
and the granular ronStar all these dry ingredients into that the mixture
you need to make sure that it's thoroughly and homogeneously blended
to allow for even distribution of the herbicide
and so you don't clog up the pump head with chunks of
dry material
so as I said insure that the hydro mulch tank has been thoroughly
blended and has strong agitation throughout the entire process
now you can apply the mixture to the top of the
cut and soaked akiaki stems of which you've laid on your planting surface
when you're applying the Hydro Mulch you just need to apply a light layer
to hold the stems in place and provide the carrier for fertilizer and
pre-mergent
pre-emergent herbicide if you apply too thick of the Hydro mulch layer
it will exclude the light penetration and
not allow for adequate root development
I have a small video here I'd like to show you to help give you an idea
visual idea of how the planting process and the densities
of our on planting rate and
hydro mulch application
so here I am applying the hydro mulch to the plot and you able to see
the density of the planting rate of the stems and also the thickness
which we are applying the hydro mulch to the plot
you also see the tool which I'm holding and that is connected to the pump
apparatus they showed in a few slides previous
and this is how you can deliver the hydro mulch to the specific planting area
they have much larger systems for doing a larger scale planting such as
roadsides
or large areas
so after you have the stems planted and hydro mulch with your pre emergent
herbicide
you apply irrigation directly after you finish sometimes the planting
process could be a timely
process and its going to dry out and dessicate the stems
you wanna make sure you add irrigation directly after you finish the process
in our experiments we use overhead irrigation you see the
headers that are flanking both sides the field
we advise use of a drip irrigation system
to help direct the water directly to the root zone and also
minimize the water lost through evaporation
and another positive aspect of using the drip lines
is that is less prone to damage through
the typical wear and tear you get on a roadside
such as that the irrgation riser being broken by a vehicle or someone walking
next to it. So you have a lot less and more
be a lot more reliable system with this permanent drip tubing
and when you after your initial establishment want keep your stems moist
at all times
but avoid the puddeling of water even though its a marsh species you don't want
your planting site to look like a marsh
you want to just keep them moist because you have to remember that these are just
vegetative cuttings
there's no root mass so they can't acquire water as efficiently as a regular plant
once the rooting has initiated you are able to lower the watering amounts
to allow for
better and more adequate uptake for the plants
finally the last step is the post maintenance and even though
you've already applied and planted your protocols
it's very critical to continue this post maintenance process
and maintain a properly because you can still have some
serious problems with this part of the establishment
so after two months in time it's important to come in and manually remove
whatever few weeds or weeds that are emerging in these plots
because you put the RonStar in the planting period two months ago
should have pretty good weed control but you may have a few weeds that are
breaking within these plots
shouldn't be a whole lot so it should be possible to come in and manually pull
them out
at that point we have no weeds just a pure stand of the grass
you can come in and reapply fertilizer at a rate of 50 pounds per acre
and also you want to reapply the Ron Star 2G at a hundred pound per acre
rate
and this should get carry out the weed control for a couple more months
now at we are at a four to six month period
as the ronstar should be slowly wearing off weeds may start to break
you can come in with the selective herbicide and
safely remove those weeds that are beginning to
come through. You see in the lower left-hand picture this is an
illustration
of one of our akiaki plant plots without any pre-emergent herbicide
and you see here it's almost undetectable because there's so much
invading grass
and other broad leaf species that are taking over this crop
plot next to it we have one of our experimental plots
at a one-month after planting
and you can see that this is almost weed free area and that the target plan
the akiaki is just beginning to show new green growing tips
and next to that is the plot at a three month period
and you see again this stand is almost weed free and we also have complete canopy
closure of our target akiaki grass
so the post emergent sprays which are able to come in at that four to six month
period
are to remove the broad leaf and sedge weeds that may be present
for spot treatments you can use garlon four which the active ingredient is
Triclopyr
applied at a rate up to 1.17 gallons per acre
but remember this is just for the spot sprays so if you have
specific hot spots of weeds that are breaking maybe around
irrigation riser or the joints of the drip tubing
you can use the garlon four on that site
if you want to do a complete spray over the top of the akiaki grass
you can use the milestone VM which is the active ingredient
aminopyralid and apply to rate of
nine ounces per acre
and you see on the lower left-hand side this is what
plot looks like of akiaki grass on the roadway
that the weeds have been left without having pre-emergent weed control or post
emergent weed control
and you see here this is not a very aesthetically pleasing plot
because if the weed pressure that is exhibited
so in review of the whole planting process
you want to start with a vigorous stalk plant material
and this is achieved by providing irrigation and fertilizer
for a period of one month before harvesting you also want to make sure
that this plot is weed free as possible so you're not transferring weeds
to your planting site after that period
you can come in and cut 18 to 24 inch
links above your akiaki stems and you want to do this with a sharp knife
or sickle sickle bar tool
um not a flail mower or a rotary weed eater
because that will damage the plants
after you cut your stems cleanly you can soak them for a 24-hour period
in your dipping grow root hormone solution one part dipping grow
to 35 parts of water upon planting after 24 hour soaking period
you insure the contact of the cut stems
on your previously moist and planting service at a rate
of eleven hundred pounds per acre. You want to ensure that the stems are fully
contacting the planting surface as I mentioned
because the stems that are protruding upright will not
root properly
at that point you can come in with the hydro mulch covering
with your RonStar granular formulation
at a hundred pounds per acre rate to
cap the surface to hold the stems down and provide for your pre mergent weed
control
about two months later you can come in again and hand weed whatever few weeks
that may be a breaking through the
ronstar reapply fertilizer and reapply
RonStar again that should take you out to about four to six month period
at that point if weeds are persisting you can come in with the post emergent
spray
of milestone VM over the entire area
or specified spot spray of the garlon four
to your site and also
I might add that when you do any mowing in the future if your stand is getting
higher you have to mow down
you want to maintain the same type of procedures you did when you cut the
stems originally
by using a sharp knife or a sickle bar in order to cut
you don't ever want to come in with a flail mower because that will damage the stand
if you have any other questions feel free to contact me
at slucas@hawaii.edu and I hope you have a safe and happy planting
Mahalo