175 - Marie Vicksta and Michael O'Loughlin - Pollinator Habitat on County Roadsides (in English)

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:00:00] There is a lot of interest in creating pollinator habitat on roadsides, but it is difficult. A roadside is not necessarily the best place to try and grow plants. And in addition, there can be concerns around plants and agriculture that's bordering those roads that, requires a little bit of nuance and that's where our guests this week come in.

I'm really pleased to have on the show Marie Vicksta who's a Conservation Planner with Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District, but also Michael O'Loughlin. Some of you in Oregon know Michael, because he's everywhere; he was actually awarded the behind the scenes Master Gardener award because he really does have his fingers in a lot of things. He's a grass seed grower. He works with the Oregon Bee Atlas. He's a Master Gardener. He serves on many committees. Anyways, in this episode, we're going to hear about this great combination of soil and water conservation districts, working with someone like Michael and counties to come up with pollinator roadside establishment trials that might set the stage for broader adoption of a pollinator plantings on roadsides.

It's a really great example of how things can come together at the grassroots in a very practical and cost-effective way. So I'm just going to be quiet and let's just go straight into this conversation with Marie Vicksta from the Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District and Michael O'Loughlin this week on PolliNation.

Okay. In past episodes, we've talked about soil and water conservation districts. And, in my mind, and maybe in some of our listeners, the division between soil and water conservation districts and things like the federal NRCS... how do these two things come together, Marie? What is a soil and water conservation district, and how does it interface with these federal programs?

Marie Vicksta: [00:01:54] Yeah, you're seeing us in the wild is what you're saying.  And a lot of the districts around the state have quite small staffs. We at our district in Yamhill County, have about seven and a half staff members, three of which are technical staff members that go out to people's properties and walk the land with them, have conversations about what their goals are, and focus on, things like water quality, water quantity , habitat restoration . Some of the districts work a lot more on forest management; we do a little bit as well, especially Oak restoration and Oak management. And we're set up to be the local voice on conservation; we have a board that's locally elected.

Often I'll have friends call me or text me before elections, to ask who is this district director that I'm voting for? But they are long-time residents often who have neighbors and they talk to their neighbors about issues and they provide feedback on our work in the field.

And then a lot of districts have very close ties with both the farm service agency, and the natural resources conservation service. In our situation, we are co-located with both of those federal agencies who are excellent partners both as technical resources, but they also provide a lot of financial resources to folks.

And in again, cases like ours, where we don't have a very large tax-base, we rely on them quite a lot for funding for the conversations that we're having with landowners about things they'd like to accomplish. And the goal of the natural resources conservation district or conservation service is to assist landowners, implement those goals, and provide cost share and incentives for that kind of work.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:03:49] Fantastic. And the soil water conservation districts are really rooted in the county. And I guess the thing that I'm curious about for Yamhill Soil and Water Conservation District, what are some of the key priorities real specific to your county?

Marie Vicksta: [00:04:02] Water quality is always an issue; we're a very predominantly agriculturally driven county, and with that, comes some of the concerns that citizens and, the landowners and land managers that we're working with about how to mitigate some of the things that are going on and keep the soil where it's supposed to be and not end up in our streams and lakes and rivers.

And Oak restoration is another; we have a staff member who's pretty much fully engaged only on Oak restoration and helping private landowners with that work. We have the endangered fender's blue butterfly within our county, so that work directly correlates with recovery efforts with that species.

We also are unique in our county that we do a lot of work on actual private land protection. So we're one of those you districts in the state that actually owns and manages its own property, and that property is purchased often for protection of the wildlife benefits that it might provide.

But also we have property that's looking at agricultural land use protection. So I would say those are the main focus that our district is looking at.

Fantastic. I can see Andony Melathopoulos: [00:05:16] how all of those have some implication for pollinators, but, specifically the Oak restoration and fender's blue, but also just so many pollinators in those fragments of native Oak habitat, that's a really important pollinator conservation initiative. Now I did invite you and Michael on the show today because of a very specific pollinator.

I'm very excited about it initiative that's going in and Yamhill County with pollinators.  You're really trying to see how you can install pollinator habitat on a county road. Can you give us a sense of how this project came about? What was the genesis of the idea for this project?

Marie Vicksta: [00:06:01] Yeah. So this is another cooperative effort that our district has been engaged in with not only the county public works, but also some concerned citizens , and other local partners like the greater Yamhill Watershed Council to work on vegetated vegetation management along the roadsides, and how that work is being done by the county. And that partnership has grown into some work focusing on weed work and weed management along the roadsides. But also wanting to look at erosion prevention. Specifically if you drive around Yamhill County very often, you'd notice that a lot of the roadside ditches are completely vacant of vegetation.

And this is a pretty typical practice, especially when there's seed crops being grown adjacent to the county road. They essentially need to be a buffer for the seed crop. So what we're trying to do is one: work with a mix that would not give producers or farmers any concern about seed purity.

But also provide some of the benefits that we're interested in. Those ditches are directly a conduit of a stormwater in the rainy season. So could definitely use the vegetation in order to protect the ditch.

But when I approached Michael about this project, I was like, if we're going to try to put in something for erosion control, why aren't we thinking about something that also could benefit pollinators on top of that and have a multiple benefits solution. So we put our heads together and Michael of course, jump in whenever you want, but put our heads together about what that might look like and what some of those goals would be.

And we talked to a lot of people and got a lot of opinions about what we could look at planting and came to a mix that we thought would hopefully be pretty successful. And roadside ditches that are along his property line that would provide those pollinator benefits, but also eventually prevent erosion as well.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:08:18] Michael, I remember you're a seed grower, and I remember you giving a talk at  a summit here, a Pacific Northwest Pollinator Summit, where you talked about the real need to, when thinking about pollinator habitat, integrating it in with farm concerns. So tell us a little bit about this from your perspective. I imagine as a seed grower yourself making sure that you don't have weed seeds is important, but also as a conservationist, a real early adopter in terms of farm conservation, you probably had some thoughts on how to do that.

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:08:51] Yeah, I think, a lot of times in theory putting in habitat next to farmland sounds like a perfect solution to land owners helping with ecosystems. But in reality, a farm is a business and that has some constraints, financial and as well as labor constraints, that sometimes when you're putting in habitat, it actually works against those efforts. So finding a balance between those two is what I like to do.

I'm willing to give up a little bit of land to do it. But at the same time I don't want to create a headache because quite frankly, everybody's busy and a lot of this stuff just takes resources at the wrong time of year. When Marie and I were talking about this project, she and I worked on an earlier project of a beetle bank in the middle of one of the fescue fields.

And that beetle bank contains quite a few five specific forbs that we were testing for pollinators as well. So then when Maria and I were talking about these roadside areas, we thought we could probably with enough research and just a little bit of... "hey, you guys are gonna have to trust us. We are going to work through the system and test the system out."

We thought we had come up with a fairly decent erosion control mix for the side of the road that wouldn't create a contamination in the in the fescue fields, and I think we came up with a pretty good mix.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:10:27] Now I imagine it's one thing growing plants in cultivated areas where you've got really good weed management and the seed bank has been depleted, and so on and so forth. But I imagine a ditch probably is the hardest, and has the highest weed pressure of any place on earth. And also just erosion and compaction; it's not a very friendly place to try and grow anything. Can you tell us a little bit about how you are approaching the establishment part of this project?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:10:55] I think that is a great question. If I were to do this as a farmer, I would fluff up the seed bed, I would eradicate weeds for a couple of years, and I would nuke it. And then with a sterile kind of ground, as far as we could do that and getting rid of most of the seed bank, and then I would plant it, and then irrigate it, and off it'd go.

But that's not what this seed trial is about. It is literally, could we come up with a mix that could be done in a normal situation?  Public works in the county has been great; they came out and they graded the side of the road where we are testing the seed mixes and they did it with no instructions of how to make it like perfect for seeds.

This is just you do it, how you would normally do it, which means that we are well aware that there is a seed bank in there, and we know that there are some fairly pervasive weeds in there. Teasel, some Blackberry, some mustard, or radish, I should say. There's a couple that are fairly tenacious.  Part of this trial is going to be in a normal situation, can we come up with a seed mix that could either out-compete or hold their own against the weeds that are going to be there naturally.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:12:16] Well, tell us a little bit about that plant selection. It sounds like you've really thought about some plants that could be competitive and establish. Tell us a little bit about that plant selection process.

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:12:29] I'm gonna let Marie the first jump in on this one. She did a lot of the legwork on not just the seed mixes, but also the seeding rates. So Marie, you take this first and then I'll jump in at the end.

Marie Vicksta: [00:12:43] Sure. And I will say that we're definitely in... I wouldn't say uncharted territory, but there's a lot to be learned about planting, especially natives in the roadside.

I know ODOT is has an initiative to try to increase pollinator habitat along state highways. And in fact, there was a road project on the Dundee bypass that they did a native planting in that area. But we don't have the budget that ODOT has, so that was another consideration.

When we're talking about seed selection, we were trying to find something that would be common enough that our public works department would be able to find it very readily. And so what we decided on... and there was some opinion on whether or not we should combine native flowering forbs with non-native grasses.

But we're trying it out. It's a small area and the grass species that we're using is a creeping red, which is a pretty common erosion control grass that would be planted after any sort of ground disturbance. And then, in the beetle bank, we had a lot of success with the vari-leaf phacelia, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners are familiar with the lacy phacelia, but the vari-leaf phacelia is actually the native variety that we have here in Oregon.

The other nice thing about that particular species is it's pretty tough; it is found in some pretty extreme areas.  I've seen it in the Gorge and it's in these rough rocky soils. So they thought perhaps it would do pretty well along the roadside.

And of course it was already in the farm and doing great.  So we were able to collect seed that we had planted at the farm already. Blue gilia, which is another, is an annual that there's been a lot of research coming out of Oregon State about the amount of pollinator benefit that particular plant   potentially has.

And then a yarrow variety that is a low growing variety, and yarrow is another very tough plant. And hopefully, with two perennials and annual and then the creeping red fescue, we're hoping to have pretty good establishment. Which actually, Michael shared some photos of some of the phacelia's already starting to germinate and come up.

So that's great to see already.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:15:14] So how did it go? Tell us a little bit about the details, when did this get established? When did this start and how are you going to evaluate it?

Marie Vicksta: [00:15:22] So we started gosh, as far as talking about this, was last year because Michael had to contact... basically we had to stop spraying the roadside. It's very common to maintain that denuded ditch, to use a pre-emergent.

So basically it's something that you put down on the ground to try to prevent any establishment of new weeds. Of course, a lot of those pre-emergents have quite a bit of hang time in the soil. So we didn't want to seed anything into the ditch and basically waste our time because there was already some sort of pre-emergent acting on any of the potential growth.

And then this fall, I'll let Michael jump in, but we coordinated with the public works department about when we would get the seeding done and I'll let Michael take it from here.

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:16:14] Oh yeah. So we probably in all honesty started a little late on the seeding. I probably would have wanted to go maybe closer to September, but this was an extremely dry year.

We wanted a little bit of moisture on the soil first, before we seeded to just to get some germination going. So we did start a little late, but that's how this whole project is. If the county's going to adopt this, it's not going to always be the perfect situation.

 Public works came in, like I said, and graded that. The next step was to lay down the seed. In a normal situation, if the county were going to do this, they would take this seed mix and put it into a hydro seeder and then spray it on the side of these roadside ditches. In our case, because we're doing small plots, we had to simulate that in that with these various seeding rates that were testing, each plot was actually hand seeded. We spread it by hand and then they hydro seeded over the top of it with the fescue. So the forbs went down first, and then the fescue went on top with the hydroseeding mix. And that's the only way we could do it and get these separate plots so we can actually evaluate the three different seeding rates that we're testing.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:17:35] All right. That makes a lot of sense. So you've got these different seeding rates and you're going to evaluate them over time. What do you think you're going to see? What are these plots going to look like over time?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:17:45] I'll talk about the specific t species that we put in there and what we expect, but this is mother nature, so who knows? So the blue gilia is an annual. That is in that mix because we want some blooms the first year out. Because I think from a public perception, if this is going to be used, the blooms would be a good first year bonus.

But we have a feeling that blue gilia will drop out of that mix eventually. It'll just be out competed. It is a bee magnet. It's been studied quite a bit. Aaron Anderson, who I know you've had on this program, tested that flour and found it to be very effective. It's late spring, early summer bloomer.

So we think that one's going to drop out. The yarrow competes very well. It competes with other weeds, and should stay in the mix then maybe at some point become dominant. And then phacelia, which we've tested on the beetle bank we have tends to be a good weed suppressor. So it tends to out compete the weeds, not just cohabitate with them.

So that a one, which is our middle of the season, bloomer should also become dominate. So the hope is the fescue, which is going to spread quickly, is going to stay. And then the two really hardy forbs, the perennials, will be a dominant part of the mix and the blue gilia will drop out eventually. That's the theory.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:19:16] I suppose the theory gets shown in practice. This all works. This is going to be a lot of interest to the county, and I imagine surrounding counties. How do you see this sort of rolling out? Let's say it does turn out to be a smashing success. How will this potentially lead to more county roads being planted into pollinator habitat?

Marie Vicksta: [00:19:37] So we're working still very closely with public works, and in fact, I've been on probably half a dozen site visits. We wrote this particular project up in our newsletter and people are really interested in what they can do. And it's worked for the district for 10 years, and I've written dozens of newsletter articles.

I've never had people contact me like this, about how they can help and how they can participate. Which is awesome. And we just want to keep working in cooperation with public works to try to, basically have this be business as usual. If the mix is cheap enough and it doesn't modify or need any modification to their existing ditch maintenance protocols, I would say there's a case to make it your everyday mix that you're using. And hopefully that spills over into other counties just by people driving through and, hopefully saying how beautiful our ditches look.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:20:40] Yeah, why can't Benton County have nice ditches, too?

I am so excited to hear about this initiative. It's really fantastic. But let's take a quick break. I'm sure you guys have some pretty diverse skillsets. Our listeners are probably really curious to know how you answer the three questions that we ask all our guests.  Let's take a quick break. We'll be back in just one sec.

Okay. We are back. So, book recommendation, do you have a book that you want our listeners to know about? I'm so curious what they're going to be. Marie, let's start with you.

SoMarie Vicksta: [00:21:18] I'm picking an oldie, but a goodie and going with the, Jim Pojar:  Plants of the Pacific Northwest.

It's a great plant ID book, and I think if you're at all interested in plants and want to learn more, it's a great resource.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:21:34] What an excellent suggestion. I remember seeing that book back when I was a graduate student in Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. It's fantastic.

It's an all-weather book. It really lays is out everything clearly for you, real great pictures and some line drawings. Fantastic suggestion. Awesome. Let's turn our attention to Michael, you must have one heck of a pollinator library. What's your recommendation?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:21:58] I've got a few of them.

I'm going to go with the, probably the standard answer. That's been very popular on pollination, and that is The Bees in Your Backyard.  I don't have a doctorate in anything. It is such a great book for people who just generally love pollinators as well as people that want to learn more; it's got both sides of it. It's just that it's one of the best books I've ever seen done on native bees. So that would be the one I'd go to.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:22:25] Before you became a bee nut, because you head up the Yamhill Oregon Bee Atlas Team, and you're also on the advisory committee of the Oregon Bee Atlas.

Was that a book that kind of got you started or did it go even further back before that book?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:22:39] Interesting. I don't think that book was published until after I joined the Bee Atlas.  I was just flying blind until the book. I think you guys got me into this? I don't know. I don't know quite how, or what got me to drink the Kool-Aid, but definitely that book has brought me along.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:22:57] I'm so excited as well. Cause I'm looking... it's 20 days from, I think today, that I'm going to have Olivia Messinger Carol on the show and they've got two new books coming out.  The first one is going to be on the bees of the Eastern US, and then they've got the bees of the Western US. I am so excited for those books.

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:23:15] If there are anything like The Bees in Your Backyard, I am actually going to get both, even though I live in the West.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:23:23] Me too, actually. Okay.  Go to tool. You guys are outside people working with your hands and doing real practical projects. Do you have a go-to tool for the kind of work that you do that you want our listeners to know about?

Marie Vicksta: [00:23:38] Yeah, I have to say dibble tools. We do a lot of plantings, and particularly if you have plantings with any sort of plug, which often grasses and sometimes forbs will be in a plug form. It's a long it almost looks like a shovel handle, but then there's a sharp tip that's weighted.

 Sharp is probably not the right word, but it's pointed. Basically you shove it into the ground and it hole that's perfect for your plug, and you can put the plug in and peel the dirt back in around it. And it makes for very quick planting.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:24:17] You're the first person to recommend a dibble tool on this show. Let me get this straight, does it have a place for your boot to put pressure on? Or is it just by hand; you just got to ram it into the soil? How does it work?

Marie Vicksta: [00:24:30] I've seen both. But yeah definitely often we'll have a little step for your boot, maybe two or three inches that you can use the weight of the tool to put it into the ground and then use the weight of your body to finish the job. And man, and especially after we did planting at Michael's beetle bank, I was really thankful I had a couple of dibble tools to make quick work of that.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:24:55] Fantastic. Wow. Okay. Michael, do you have anything that can beat the dibble tool?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:25:01] Yeah, I actually, I do because mine actually does have a short, sharp point. I always carry a hori with me, the Japanese knife. It is great for actually planting plugs as well. But it's great for digging small little trenches to put pan traps and vein traps into. It's got a saw edge that you can cut string with. If you're trying to repair stuff, it's just my go-to tool for weeding and pruning and whatever else I need it for.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:25:31] You could probably open a can of beans with it too.

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:25:34] I'm sure you can. And I have literally buried mine for three months at a time. I keep losing it whenever I'm planting potatoes or something, and then I'll find it months later, I'll dig it up again. And then I just keep going with it.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:25:48] That's a great image.  We've come around to the last question. I'm sad to see this episode end, but, I want to ask you guys. Marie, let's start with you. Do you have a favorite pollinator species when you see it? You're just like, I love that thing.

O f  course. We, at leastMarie Vicksta: [00:26:06] our office, has all been working from home and it's great to be able to see more about what's going on in my own backyard. And I have a resident Anna's hummingbird that is just beautiful.

And I'm so glad that I'm able to have kind of a bright splash of color throughout the day.  I know how important they are as a pollinator. And it's just been a joy to have.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:26:30] They are amazing. I particularly like it when they... we've got some over here and they go to the feeder and then they land on the brush... and they've got drops of nectar hanging off their beak.

They're just like, "I just really enjoyed that." Yeah. How about yourself, Michael? So do you have, of the many pollinators that come across your desk, is there one that is a favorite?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:26:53] Wow.  I don't have a favorite necessarily. I think that changes. Letting me put it this way, it changes all the time, depending on what I get exposed to and what as part of the Oregon Bee Atlas I'm catching out there.

I would say probably this year, my favorite has been triepeolus concavus, which is a large triepeolus; it's a cuckoo be of svastra. Very cool bees: jet black tip, this really this tan to yellow oppressed hairs on it that make a great pattern on the back. So I'm going with that triepeolus.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:27:29] That is so cool. And whereabouts in the state would one find one?

Michael O'Loughlin: [00:27:36] Oh boy, those are East of the Cascades.  Basically just hunt down a population of svastras, and you'll find the triepeolus there.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:27:46] Fantastic. Thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. I'm really thrilled to hear about this initiative and I know people across the US are going to be thinking about this kind of approach to making very cost-effective pollinator habitat to solve a problem in in terms of soil erosion and keeping weeds out. Fantastic. Thanks so much.

Marie Vicksta: [00:28:04] Yeah. And we'll be happy to be back to give a report.

Andony Melathopoulos: [00:28:08] I'm counting on it.