by libby, June 28 2021
One of the most enlightening parts of this internship is learning about the ins and outs of the struggles and successes of working in environmental friends. The most recent struggle? Wood.
Who would have thought finding lumber would be such a challenge. Of all of the supplies and crazy demands we need, I assumed getting a few wooden boards would be the easiest. But as it turns out timber is scarce and expensive right now. Patrick, the land manager at the Intervale, told us he believes it might be due to the pandemic and people needing more wood for home renovations. Several internet sources, such as Vox agree. I read the price of 1000 boards (a board being 12X12X1 inches) has traditionally been $200-$400, but is now retailing at $1,000. The pandemic has led to an influx of home renovations and improvements, causing wood demand, and correspondingly prices, to increase.
Regardless of this increase of prices, we still needed wood. Our original plan for our Goutweed management test plots was to surround the plots by two barriers, the first being wood and second being plants. We want to test the effectiveness of edging and different types of perimeters to secure the area of invasives spreading through rhizomes and roots. How it works is a deep piece of edging is buried into the ground, deeper than the roots can go, so that the plant material is contained to one area. Wood we have found, is supposed to be more affordable than metal and concrete edging, and more sturdy than plastic. In public settings it also can look more aesthetically pleasing as well. So basically we need twelve10 inch wooden planks deep enough to block goutweed roots for our 4 plots.
Unable to find wood anywhere, we thought the end of our project might have come before the beginning. However Patrick came up with the great idea to go to the mattress recycling plant right next to the interval to see if they could share some wood with us. That was a success! But now we had several thin and wonky planks filled with nails and staples to piece together, along with a few full frames we had to pull apart.
Through this process we learned and experimented with using power tools, different types of nails and screws, wood glue, and twine to tie, hammer, and secure the blocks together. When we finally had enough planks secured together (about 10-12 inches deep) for two plot we were fully out of mattresses.
We buried our planks around our solarizing plot and our smothering plot, cautious of not digging deeper than 18 inches (one of the intervals rules) and decided that would be enough to accurately test if wooden edging works for containing roots, even if having planks for each would be ideal. In burying them we first pulled any goutweed and its roots from the area around the plot and then put the boards down to assure there was no gout inside the plots to start. Now we have to monitor and see if the roots can spread to inside the plot regardless of the deep edging.
This experience has however allowed us to meet new Burlington community members (like the workers at the Burlington mattress recycling plant!) and think outside of the box! We had to be creative and do a lot of work to acquire and make these wood planks usable which, while a good experience for us, may not be very feasible and realistic on a large scale. The staff of people working on the project would have to be larger for this to truly be effective for bigger plots. However we are going to continue to monitor and follow up with how well this edging method works and if it is worth considering to do again. It is possible to consider using other materials, such as metal and plastic as well. Rock and concrete edging is an option but typically more expensive than wood. Duncan has found some scrap plastic we are going to experiment with as edging for the Virginia waterleaf plot.