Sequestering carbon by land restoration and reforestation in Iceland

KarenRei · Aug 9, 2019

After giving them a good soak, I start loading up trees - two trays of blue spruce (moderately shade tolerant, sheep resistant, shelter needed when young but quite hardy when older, takes any soil but doesn't tolerate standing water, good at slope anchoring), and two of white spruce (same, but tolerate deep shade, and even better in several other categories). Some of the white spruce are seriously outgrowing their pots.

The weather looks lovely.... but again it's quite breezy. The farmers seem to be done with hay baling.

I start taking seedlings out of trays and putting them into plastic bags (to make them easier to carry and quicker to get out). Because it's breezy and a bit chilly outside, I do it in the car.

Done with the blue spruce. The car has a great aroma to it. It smells like Christmas in here. Indeed, blue spruce is sometimes used as a christmas tree, and white spruce occasionally as well.

Not all of the trees look ready to plant, so I set the stragglers aside.

I start working on the white spruce. The needles are sharper than both blue and sitka spruce - I can see why sheep supposedly hate them. They look and smell nice, though.

Many of the white spruce are quite sizeable. They really were in these trays too long.

Lots of stragglers. Some appear quite dead. Some look healthy, but they came out of the trays with only a fraction of a rootball intact, and I'm obviously not going to plant trees without the roots being in tip-top shape

Back these go as well.

The weather is mostly sunny, but some clouds drift over (at quite a clip, due to the breeze)

Blue spruce bag (with fertilizer bag inside) on the right. White spruce bag (can't hold both handles at the same time) on the left. Two tools coming with - the planting tool for when the soil isn't too rocky for it, and the sharp tapered spade for when it's really rocky.

KarenRei · Aug 9, 2019

I start heading into the middle of the canyon, looking for things that can provide shelter. Ah, a rock. This should be at least some shelter.

Sunlight isn't too bad here, so I choose a blue spruce - saving the white spruce for the really shady places. Most of the spots on this initial slope are suitable for blue spruce.

Finding well sheltered places where they don't have to also be sunny is proving to be incredibly easy (combining "shelter" and "sun" is difficult). The only downside is that the ground tends to be rocky near them, which is slowing me down significantly (along with sometimes the need to arrange rocks to enhance the shelter)

Neither spruce species is particularly nutrient-needy, but I figure a couple pieces of fertilizer each can't hurt

Some places don't have natural shelter, but have rocks that I can arrange into a shelter. The biggest rocks are alwaysin the direction of the prevailing winds, while the sharp dropoff and the surrounding rocks help encourage the formation of a recirculating bubble with the main windstream going overhead.

I'm not sure if I built a great shelter here, or an ingenious delayed-action spruce crusher.

I have no qualms about planting under overhangs. As mentioned the other day, I like the aesthetic effect of trees having to grow around rocks.

Some places in the area I had to try a few locations before I found ones that were dry enough - but also ones that weren't right over bedrock. This overhang worked.

I hope nobody mistakes these arranged rocks for a fire pit...

KarenRei · Aug 9, 2019

Looking up over a newly-planted spruce, the sun is starting to set behind Akrafjall across the fjörd. Days are getting a bit shorter.

This spruce's shelter is also nice and fluffy. Looks warm. Wish I was that well insulated - the wind is really picking up and getting cold.

The moss continues a significant distance down, wrapped around the trunk (the tree is planted deeper than it looks

)

This area is getting increasingly shady, so while I was initially favouring blue spruce, I'm now using almost exclusively white spruce. The shade of the canyon here is amplified by shade from overhanging moss. But shelter comes above all else.

Found a natural, sheltered planter box

Maybe I'm taking the shelter aspect too far, pressing trees right up against the rocks like this. But given how much I'm getting blasted by these winds, it's extra motivation to ensure that the trees in question are not lashed by said winds while they're young.

I get onto an area that's mostly exposed bedrock, and it's hard to find a place to plant trees. But a windbreak is sorely needed; the wind is biting me to my bones, and strong enough to push me around. I find myself trying to curl up into the sheltered places I'm making for the trees

(doesn't work too well, I'm bigger than a seedling). Here on a small ledge I've filled in a gap with small rocks, added extra soil, and a large side rock. This is all going much slower than I'd hoped.

This boulder sits on the edge of a cliff. I almost didn't plant in its shelter because the soil is just so thin (maybe 2-3cm?), and it feels like bedrock beneath. White spruce is famous for its roots spreading near the surface to anchor the ground, but this seems too thin for even that. But I desperately need a windbreak here. I pile up as much dirt as I can, weighing it down with rocks, and spread lots of fertilizer in the whole surrounding area to help encourage plants to grow and lay down more organic matter. Once the tree starts outgrowing its soil, I can always come in with a bucket of more soil to add.

KarenRei · Aug 9, 2019

Grass whips around rapidly.

Higher-up boulders have deeper soil near them. They curiously often have a deep crevase just uphill from them (uphill on this slope tends to be the downwind side, due to the river-bend and cliffs just to the west). The base of this tree is way far down, and the tree barely sticks up out of the top. But that's probably a good thing for it to get established.

Looking from the uphill boulder to the cliff-edge boulder. You can see how, due to the bend in the river, wind that's come down the canyon is forced up the cliff and in my direction. I can't wait to get out of here.

I head back to the car. It's getting quite dim. This heat wave that we had is Officially Over(TM). (Indeed, the high forecast for Monday is 10°C (50°F))

Back home, I water the remaining seedlings in their bags. I was clearly overambitious with 4 trays; about 60% remain.

-----

I'm going to be working and on-call for the next two days, so no heading out to the land to plant trees in the canyon

Hopefully I'll be able to pick up a couple bags of dirt, then I can start doing some planting at home. Maybe get some seeds in all those empty trays.

ED: Just checked - while there's no weather station in my valley, in nearby Kjalarnes gusts were up to 20 m/s (72 kph / 45 mph)

Lessmog · Aug 10, 2019

KarenRei said:
Our two main berries are bláber (lit. "blueberry", but technically bilberries - "common bilberry" and "bog bilberry") and krækiber (crowberries), but there's a few other wild ones (like wild strawberries and stone bramble), and a lot of introduced species that do well where there's sufficient shelter (black currants, red currants, gooseberries, etc... raspberries have started spreading in forests in some places). Blackberries are a challenge here, but they can fruit in the right conditions.

I hope you get a nice thermos full - I love fresh-picked blackberries!

Lessmog said:
No, the thermos is for us workers. We bring cleaned-out yoghurt buckets to collect any berries.
For some reason it seems the landowner/farmer has taken a dislike to blackberry brambles and cuts them down. But we can just follow the cow patches ...

We have "kråkbär" on the heather heaths but they are more for birds. Red currants and gooseberries are what we tried to transplant (successfully). Raspberries run wild here, they like ashes and burst out after a forest fire. Also "liberated" a few strands of another blackberry relative, "salmbär" or "blue raspberries" which are the pride of Gotland: fewer but bigger corns, deeply blue and quite sweet when ripe. Someone gave us a jar of that jam but we still haven't found a solemn use for it.

Oh, and there are cultivated variants of "Havtorn", Hippophae rhamnoides, also known as sea-buckthorn that thrive here near the ocean. Bright orange berries, somewhat acrid but full of stuff to drive you to health . Also "Aronia", a berry cultivated for food color but also full of vitality stuffs .

And so on. But this tired log needs rest now.

Took advantage of the fine weather Friday (today is rainy with risk of thunder; no picnic). Not the best start, but we did find a few more ripe blackberries among an abundance of unripe ones; clearly we were not first on that puck:

Ahh, coffee break on the warm rocks:

Surprisingly, some plants find a space to survive even in the ice-age crevices. Wild apples, juniper and heather (in violent bloom this year after the long draught last summer) and a rowan overloaded with red berries just out of frame, in somewhat deeper soil, also wild roses etc. I love the color combination of juniper, heather and those smooth pinkish rocks:

White water lilies in a small swamp. This landscape is extremely varied!

KarenRei · Aug 10, 2019

Very different landscape to mine, with that granite rather than basalt!

And wild creeping apples... that's a new one to me! Are they any good, or are they only suitable for jam (e.g. crabapples)?

Lessmog · Aug 10, 2019

KarenRei said:
Very different landscape to mine, with that granite rather than basalt! And wild creeping apples... that's a new one to me! Are they any good, or are they only suitable for jam (e.g. crabapples)?

Wild apples are a lottery. Most are quite tart and small, but sometimes you can find pretty good ones that honor a pie or even are good to eat raw! These were not sampled this time. Probably a bit too early anyway. I think they were "real" apples though, only gone feral.

The stone industry was very important in these parts for over 100 years. Everywhere there are leftover pieces, big and small, except where access to ship out was too hard. The paths of narrow-gauge railways can still be traced here and there. As I mentioned we live in an abandoned quarry with remains of cranes and pulleys. There is a stone cutting museum nearby. The last quarry here closed in the 1960's I think. Lots of stone was exported to Buenos Aires e g, but the big order from Hitler was never delivered. A number of large pieces have been turned into an artificial reef for the benefit of lobsters recently and the waves break over it.

Still stone scuplturing is flourishing, drawing international artists, and there is an open air exhibition every summer.

KarenRei · Aug 10, 2019

Lessmog said:
Wild apples are a lottery. Most are quite tart and small, but sometimes you can find pretty good ones that honor a pie or even are good to eat raw! These were not sampled this time. Probably a bit too early anyway. I think they were "real" apples though, only gone feral.

The stone industry was very important in these parts for over 100 years. Everywhere there are leftover pieces, big and small, except where access to ship out was too hard. The paths of narrow-gauge railways can still be traced here and there. As I mentioned we live in an abandoned quarry with remains of cranes and pulleys. There is a stone cutting museum nearby. The last quarry here closed in the 1960's I think. Lots of stone was exported to Buenos Aires e g, but the big order from Hitler was never delivered. A number of large pieces have been turned into an artificial reef for the benefit of lobsters recently and the waves break over it.

Still stone scuplturing is flourishing, drawing international artists, and there is an open air exhibition every summer.

That's a convenient resource. While we have lots of interesting crystals and semiprecious stones (as well as things like obsidian which can be worked), most of our bulk basalt is ill-suited for working for sculpture, masonry, etc. It's quite hard, but too brittle. There's some places here that sell tourists jewelry made from basalt, and they actually have to import a special type of basalt that can be worked easily in order to pull it off

Fred42 · Aug 10, 2019

KarenRei said:
Looking up over a newly-planted spruce, the sun is starting to set behind Akrafjall across the fjörd. Days are getting a bit shorter.

View attachment 439910

View attachment 439912

This spruce's shelter is also nice and fluffy. Looks warm. Wish I was that well insulated - the wind is really picking up and getting cold.

View attachment 439913

The moss continues a significant distance down, wrapped around the trunk (the tree is planted deeper than it looks )

View attachment 439914

This area is getting increasingly shady, so while I was initially favouring blue spruce, I'm now using almost exclusively white spruce. The shade of the canyon here is amplified by shade from overhanging moss. But shelter comes above all else.

View attachment 439915

Found a natural, sheltered planter box

View attachment 439916

Maybe I'm taking the shelter aspect too far, pressing trees right up against the rocks like this. But given how much I'm getting blasted by these winds, it's extra motivation to ensure that the trees in question are not lashed by said winds while they're young.

View attachment 439917

I get onto an area that's mostly exposed bedrock, and it's hard to find a place to plant trees. But a windbreak is sorely needed; the wind is biting me to my bones, and strong enough to push me around. I find myself trying to curl up into the sheltered places I'm making for the trees (doesn't work too well, I'm bigger than a seedling). Here on a small ledge I've filled in a gap with small rocks, added extra soil, and a large side rock. This is all going much slower than I'd hoped.

View attachment 439918

This boulder sits on the edge of a cliff. I almost didn't plant in its shelter because the soil is just so thin (maybe 2-3cm?), and it feels like bedrock beneath. White spruce is famous for its roots spreading near the surface to anchor the ground, but this seems too thin for even that. But I desperately need a windbreak here. I pile up as much dirt as I can, weighing it down with rocks, and spread lots of fertilizer in the whole surrounding area to help encourage plants to grow and lay down more organic matter. Once the tree starts outgrowing its soil, I can always come in with a bucket of more soil to add.

View attachment 439919

View attachment 439920

Looks like a lot of trees found a good home, although I'm a bit skeptical about the one planted in an inch of soil (along with some you added around the tree)!

Lessmog · Aug 11, 2019

KarenRei said:
This boulder sits on the edge of a cliff. I almost didn't plant in its shelter because the soil is just so thin (maybe 2-3cm?), and it feels like bedrock beneath. White spruce is famous for its roots spreading near the surface to anchor the ground, but this seems too thin for even that. But I desperately need a windbreak here. I pile up as much dirt as I can, weighing it down with rocks, and spread lots of fertilizer in the whole surrounding area to help encourage plants to grow and lay down more organic matter. Once the tree starts outgrowing its soil, I can always come in with a bucket of more soil to add.

View attachment 439919

View attachment 439920

If that little spruce does take and grow big, it may one day push the boulder over the edge? Still, that will take many years. But if it happens, any people noticing must wonder how that came to be! (And will it make a sound ...

)

Of course you could put up a plaque with this URL by way of explanation for the aftbears

KarenRei · Aug 11, 2019

Lessmog said:
If that little spruce does take and grow big, it may one day push the boulder over the edge? Still, that will take many years. But if it happens, any people noticing must wonder how that came to be! (And will it make a sound ... )

Of course you could put up a plaque with this URL by way of explanation for the aftbears

Haha, I have trouble picturing that a tree there will ever get that big, given how incredibly shallow the soil is. I'll leave preventing a boulder loss an exercise to future generations if I'm wrong about that.

By then there should be more than enough trees in the area that the land could afford to have that one removed.

Since I'm on call this weekend, there've been no land trips, but I did replant all of the empty trays from the initial crowdfunded tree purchases. Mostly siberian spruce - a hardier variant of Norway spruce (the most common "Christmas tree" species). Also very shade tolerant, like white spruce, but prefers better soils and wetter places, while white spruce prefers drier places with poorer soils. It'll be quite a while before they're big enough to get planted out, though! This evening, thanks to a new donation and a suggestion, I'm going to look into acquiring tree tubes (might have to import them) to try out on a small-scale trial basis.

KarenRei · Aug 11, 2019

Fred42 said:
Looks like a lot of trees found a good home, although I'm a bit skeptical about the one planted in an inch of soil (along with some you added around the tree)!

I am too. Still, I wanted to try because the area could really use a windbreak - those winds were fierce, everywhere there except immediately behind that boulder. Bringing it more soil in the future is on my TODO list, assuming it survives its first winter.

Note that I'm just presuming that what it's on is bedrock. It could just be a large rock, wherein roots could route around it. But I think it's bedrock.

Honestly though, I'll admit to the fact that after sitting out being blasted by cold wind while you dig and dig, trying to find a spot where you're not hitting rock under the surface, the temptation to just "go ahead and plant it" rather than just moving on defeated does get to you

Frank Einstein · Aug 12, 2019

KarenRei said:
Frank - I'll take pictures of each oak once it's in the ground, and you can decide which one you want to be the memorial oak. I'll then place a ring of stones around it the next time I'm out. (assuming that it's located in a location near stones and not on a slope too steep to support a ring of stones).

All the locations you chose for the oaks look fantastic -- is there anywhere ugly on Iceland? I like that the trees are serving a very useful function of shoring up the river bank and securing the topsoil (my dad would approve of a practical application for a memorial. Bloody engineers

). Of all the oaks you planted, I like number 5 best I think. I like that it has a stunning location.

I also like that oak 5 is at the very edge of your land.

I've been thinking a lot about this; I hope it's not weird or arrogant of me to expect you to make a memorial to some random guy. I really don't want the tree to be front-and-centre, as if it's some weird territorial grab on your land by an internet stranger. I really appreciate you doing this for me, but the last thing I want is for there to be any sort of feeling of this not being completely your tree. I hope what I mean makes sense - it's hard to put into words.

KarenRei · Aug 12, 2019

Frank Einstein said:
All the locations you chose for the oaks look fantastic -- is there anywhere ugly on Iceland? I like that the trees are serving a very useful function of shoring up the river bank and securing the topsoil (my dad would approve of a practical application for a memorial. Bloody engineers ). Of all the oaks you planted, I like number 5 best I think. I like that it has a stunning location.

I also like that oak 5 is at the very edge of your land.

I've been thinking a lot about this; I hope it's not weird or arrogant of me to expect you to make a memorial to some random guy. I really don't want the tree to be front-and-centre, as if it's some weird territorial grab on your land by an internet stranger. I really appreciate you doing this for me, but the last thing I want is for there to be any sort of feeling of this not being completely your tree. I hope what I mean makes sense - it's hard to put into words.

There's nothing weird at all; I'm honoured to be able to do this for you

I'll put a ring of rocks around it the next time I'm near it, and if you want anything else to memorialize him, let me know. (It'd be nice if you could PM me his name and any other relevant info so that, if I'm walking past the tree with someone on my land, I don't have to describe it as, "This one is here to memorialize Frank Einstein's dad"

).

Wind is fairly loud outside. I'm going to go some errands as soon as I'm dressed, and hopefully it'll be died down somewhat (forecast looks like maybe some calming, but not much until late at night). Temperature is 9° in Reykjavík, so probably 8° or less (<= 46°F) on my land.

KarenRei · Aug 12, 2019

One of the errands that I ran today: picking up the soil for repotting for the winter.

These sort of quantities would be too expensive in bags, so I brought out the pickup (will be selling him soon, as getting him complaint with his last inspection would be too expensive, and I'll be getting the tow package on my Model 3)

At the soil place (which acts as a depot for soil disposed of from construction projects, as well as sorting, mixing, and adding in other resources to make custom mixes), I was getting soil blasted in my eyes from the wind. Thankfully it calmed down when it came time to load my truck.

All in all, it cost about $37, so not much at all (mixes not designed for plants would have been even cheaper). Bags would have been far more expensive.

A drizzle joined the wind on the way back (just scattered drizzle, not constant).

The weather really doesn't seem to want me to go out today.

Still, winds seem a bit calmer right now, and there's no drizzle at the moment (though I can't see Esja (the mountain between Reykjavík and my land)

). I think I'll work on repotting for those who will be spending the winter in shelter, and evaluate how the weather changes.

KarenRei · Aug 12, 2019

Due to the weather, I ended up staying home and working on transplants all day. So, for the first batch of pots I had sitting around my place:

It's actually fewer than I was thinking I had of this type, but I had forgotten all of the ones I already transplanted into these pots.

For deciding what to transplant, I had a variety of constraints that determine a good candidate:

Sheep like to eat them (e.g. trying to get them tall enough to keep them safe)
Need shelter when little (e.g. get them big enough to not need shelter)
Physically small, particularly in comparison to its siblings
Looks to be in poor health
Roots undeveloped, particularly if the rootball breaks when moving it.

First came some of the white fir which I had rejected as "not ready" last time:

Next, the first of the many rowan trays. This was actually the healthiest of the bunch... the rowan from Flóra really weren't in very good shape overall.

This pine tray clearly hadn't been watered at some point (the other one was fine). It's beginning to be clear why these were all discounted so much.

3-4 trees were dead, and a number of others were clear choices to be repotted and kept sheltered overwinter rather than getting planted out.

The willows and birch were in good shape and pretty tall, which is a shame as it made it harder for me to excuse repotting some to help them get taller than sheep-grazing-height.

I nonetheless forced a higher standard on them. Some of the alder (far right) had clearly been underwatered and needed some repotting to be set aside for recovery.

I run out of the big black pots. I have to switch to a random mix of my numerous spare pots inside. The ones with white interiors are an experiment I did a while ago... anti-rootbinding pots. There's a commercial product called Spin-Out for coating pots with a latex paint that contains insoluble copper hydroxide. Copper is a micronutrient; plants need a little of it, but are harmed by excess; if roots try to penetrate the spin-out, the root tip dies off from copper toxicity, and the plant makes new root tips elsewhere, and thus they don't bind up around the edges.

Spin-Out is expensive (particularly if I have to import it), so some people make their own with latex paint and copper hydroxide. I didn't have copper hydroxide, but I did have copper sulfate (for making my own micronutrient mixes) - but it's unfortunately water soluble, and thus would diffuse in the soil. So I reacted it with sodium hydroxide to make copper hydroxide, filtered out the precipitate, mixed that into the latex, and painted it into the pots.

Increasingly with time, I'm mainly focused on the numerous rowan, because a large portion of them simply are not ready to go out. And the more I work through them, the more concerned I get. I find worms in the pots... which normally, earthworms are good, but in these tiny pots, they probably do more harm than good (I rescued them where I could). Far more problematic, however, was that I also found insect eggs:

(I shook the eggs out of this plant, bare-rooted it by rinsing it in water, then repotted it in fresh soil). And far more common than the eggs... grubs:

I then realized that I'd been making a big mistake: I'd just been setting all these pots on the fresh dirt, and also dumping excess dirt from dead plants in with the new dirt. So I ended up having to scour the spots that had been in contact with the plants and had soil dumped on them for grubs. And I found over a dozen, and probably missed plenty.

Flóra seriously needs to work on their plant hygiene policies.

Am I concerned about "introducing species to my land" or anything? No. I've seen grubs like this before when digging to plant things. But I am concerned about the health of pots that might have grubs in them. They're probably one of, if not the main reason, why so many of these rowan were in poor health to begin with.

So now I'm faced with a decision ( chime in with your thoughts here ): "to pesticide or not to pesticide"? Chemical pesticides (I'd choose the narrowest-spectrum, fastest-breakdown one that works) would be pretty much guaranteed kills. For a biological control, I can get parasitic nematodes here, although they'd cost more and wouldn't be as certain to work. What do you think?

Regardless, I keep working through it all, as it starts to get dark. I'm seriously burning through my pot supply and have to go to smaller and smaller ones. Eventually I just load up a lot of the remaining rowan into a "rejects tray".

KarenRei · Aug 12, 2019

Man there's a lot of dirt left. I think they gave me a full cubic meter rather than just the half that I asked for. Still, I've got lots more that I can do with it... but ultimately I'll probaly have go get rid of a fair amount.

The entire trailer is full of pots, as well as the area around the trailer.

The quote-unquote "empty pots" are the (predominantly) siberian spruce seed pots that I planted the other day.

And of course, there's a whole second "floor" of plants - tamarack, blue spruce, and a bunch of pots seeded this year

-----

I'll be working for the next three days, so evenings-only. Over the next several days, the wind is supposed to slowly start dying down, and the temperature to start rising again. No rain is expected in the next few days. So I should be able to get back to planting the white and blue spruce that are currently awaiting their chance in the (regularly watered!) grocery bags.

Also, an update on the tree tubes that I was looking to get: I'm trying to get them locally to save money. I contacted Lífland, which had the clover and which I've since discovered has by far the best prices on things like fencing materials and the like. Unfortunately, they don't stock tree tubes, and don't know who might. I found a paper on the use of tree tubes in Iceland by a professor at LBHÍ (the agricultural university), so I sent him an email to see if he knows where I can get them, or if I'll have to import them.

If I have to import them... so be it!

LN1_Casey · Aug 12, 2019

I'd argue to use pesticide; you want to get them grub free sooner rather than later, and this would be a (I'm assuming) one time event before they'd be planted in the ground when they're big enough/next spring.

The other one would be better for longer term potted plants, which I don't think any of these are.

And side note; maybe spread that dirt on the areas that are only a couple cm thick! Like that one sheltered tree the other day, the one near the rock.

KarenRei · Aug 13, 2019

Good idea with what to do with excess dirt.

The slope leading up to there is shallow enough that I can get there with the pickup.

Ugh, it's always a pain how few places sell insecticides here and how little selection there is (am searching for something that'd be effective). I have deltamethrin on-hand, but that's reportedly not effective for grubs. I may have Bt at home (not sure), but you have to know the species with that, it's extremely selective. Some googling shows that Garðheimar has imidacloprid, which "can" work on grubs, but only on newly hatched ones; it's considered more of a preventative than a treatment.

Hmm, maybe I should drop by the place that sells the nematodes and see if they have anything. I don't think they do, but they'd probably know where might. I could also get current nematode pricing while I was there.

KarenRei · Aug 13, 2019

I stopped by the place with the biologic controls. They did not have any pesticides that are suitable for grubs. Ugh. I'm not sure where else to search. I went ahead and ordered some nematodes, but they won't be sent until next week, so if I find something in the next couple days, I can cancel. Or use them both, so long as any insecticide is nematode-compatible.

I head out. The breeze is sometimes still strong, but sometimes lulls. Clouds billow down across Esja.