Blog Post #1, Observations:
March 5th, 2023
8:45 am, -2 degrees Celsius
Castlegar, B.C, CANADA
Weather: overcast, 20-30cm of snow in the last week
The study area I chose is the backyard of our 5-acre property. The parcel is on a treed slope cut off on the east by a rural road and surrounded by undeveloped forest to the north and west. The south property line has a treed easement before the neighbors’ acreage opens the timber again.
Previously, the area was forested up to the house with mostly cedar/hemlock/yew. There are pockets of birch, and some pockets of ponderosa pine down by the road where it is rockier. We cleared around an acre to fire smart the property and added a French drain to redirect the subsurface flow of water away from the house.
The study area is an approx. 60m x 30m sloped (5%-30%) rectangle that has been terraced with an excavator to have 3 trails running through it. The bottom trail you could drive a pickup on, the other 2, a quad. The sloped tiers are in the process of being landscaped. Currently, only the first tier (T1) has been planted with 12 fruit trees (2 cherry, 4 peaches, 6 apples). The 2nd and 3rd tiers (T2, T3) are still natural (they consist of the understory and regrowth from when we cleared). 3 edges surrounding the rectangular plot are forested private and crown land with it backing onto the yard and house. Our chickens sometimes free range up into the tiers.
My questions are:
How does the increase in sunlight influence the tree species on the fringe of the study area vs. inside the approx. 60m x 30m plot?
Which fruit trees will leaf out first?
What differences can I find between T1 and T2 and T3?
