Session XIII - Soil preparation, seed bed sowing, and reproduction by clippings

Total Time:

Approximately 4 hours

Goals:

- To define summarizing as a communication skill, and to make this skill explicit in participants' minds.
- To give information about soil preparation, seed bed sowing and reproduction by clippings.
- Review trainees plan for vivero. Have trainees start laying out nursery.

Overview

In this session information about soils is given as a refresher for some trainees and as new information for others. Participants' vivero plan is reviewed and trainer/forester makes suggestions and gives approval for participants to start laying out nursery. Summarizing as a skill is put in this session to have participants summarize where they are technically and realize the value of this skill in technical learning.

Exercise

1. Summarizing,
2. Lecture on soil preparation, seed bed sowing and reproduction by clippings,
3. Review of trainee vivero plan and laying out of vivero.

Materials:

Flip charts, marker pens, tape, stripy, shovels, rakes, "Power in the Willow" article.

Exercise I: - Summarizing

Total Time - 20 minutes

Overview

This exercise is designed as a short, quick energizer/change of pace and is used in conjunction with the technical training session. It is done by the technical trainer as a way of integrating a skill which can be used for technical learning. This is the first introduction of this exercise and it will be used later in the program.

Procedures

Time	Activities
2 minutes	1. Technical trainer asks participants to check over the technical training of the past three days and try to prepare in their minds, a way to explain what has happened and what they have learned so that they can inform someone else about it.
5 minutes	2. Technical trainer now asks participants to form into pairs, preferably with someone who has a different technical training experience (i.e., generalist with forester). one person explains his technical training experience of the past three days while the other person listens and then summarizes his/her partner's presentation. Then people switch roles and repeat the process.
10 minutes	3. Bring the group hack together and discuss the experience by asking:
		- What if anything caused difficulty?
		- How did it feel after you were speaking, then hearing the other person try to summarize your content?
		- What do you have to work on to be a better summarizer?
		- What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of summarizing?
2 minutes	4. Technical trainer asks group: minutes
		- What can we say about summarizing as a communication skill?
1 minute	5. Close by stating that we will return to practice summarizing as a skill from 1 minute time to time in technical training and will also use it in language training.

Exercise II

Soil Preparation, Seed Bed Sowing, and Reproduction by Clipping.

Total Time:

1½ hours

Overview

In this exercise, the technical trainer gives a lecture on soil preparation, seed bed sowing and reproduction by clipping. For many participants this will be a refresher session and the technical trainer should ask people to make comments about experiences they have had. In this session the discovery of the "willow rooting substance. is introduced. Since this was published in September 1981 the article is passed out to trainees for their information (article at end of this exercise).

Procedures

Time	Activities
	1. Technical trainer gives lecture using the following outline. It is recommended that outline be placed on newsprint and displayed as technical trainer teaches various stages of outline during the lecture. Newsprint outline helps hold attention.

SOIL PREPARATION

1. Soil might have to be sterilized if there exists a danger of disease by:

a. boiling water
b. acid treatment
c. heating soil on steel plate

2. Might be better to move site,

3. Chemical sterilization,

4. Fertilization medium to be mixed with soil according to need,

5. Organic material might have to be added to help retain soil moisture and/or improve texture. The following are possibilities:

a. compost
b. straw
c. chopped pine needles (dry)
d. sawdust (aged)

1. toxic effect?
2. nutrient loss?

(Organic material could contain weed seeds and/or fungi or insects).

6. Mycorrhiza,

7. pH 6.5 (slightly acid).

SOWING

1. Across the bed - facilitates weeding
2. Make your own seed "trench":

a. board
b. depth of trench (see drawing on following page)

3. Sow sand in seed trench (optional),
4. Sprinkle seed in trench,
5. Number of seeds/meter:

a. size of seedling,
b. plant species,
c. germination prospects,
d. 1 viable seed/cm.

6. Cover with sand or dirt,
7. Water heavily after sowing,
8. You may put straw over beds - for protection against birds and moisture retention.

Board for making seed canals

REPRODUCTION BY CLIPPING

1. Sprouts cut and stuck in ground (brotes)(retoños),
2. Redwood - not effective,
3. More experimentation needed in hardwoods,
4. Rooting medium,
5. Other:

a. layering
b. moss-soil (usago) around sprout (brote).

6. Willow sprout method,
7. Horticulture:

roots (raices)
fertilizer (abono)

Vegetative reproduction - Layering

ORGANIC DISCOVERIES

JEFF COX
September 1981. Organic Gardening

Power in the Willow

THE COMMON willow evidently contains a substance, which you can extract and use at home, that far surpasses synthetic plant hormones in its ability to stimulate almost any plant into rooting.

That means hard-to-root trees like beech, cherry, pine and oak - to say nothing of vegetable cuttings, Bower slips and woody ornamental bushes now may be routinely turned out from our potting sheds and windowsills.

The discovery of the "willow rooting substance," as Dr. Makota Kawase, professor of horticulture at the agricultural research center in Wooster, Ohio, calls his finding, was an accident. (Ever notice how many scientific breakthroughs are the result of accidents? I finally know why: If scientists could define what it is they're looking for, they'd have already found it. It's when they're looking for something else that they find what they seek.)

An experimental team was using water from a basin where willow twigs were soaking to moisten softwood cuttings in a centrifuge. The softwood cuttings sent out extraordinary numbers of roots. In tracing why, the scientists found the willow rooting substance - which may have out to be "rhizocaline" ( literally, "root stimulator"), a hypothetical substance that scientists long felt must exist even though they d never found it.

Is willow rooting substance the long-sought rhizocaline?

"They share many characteristics," says Dr. Kawase. Willow rooting substance is a "remarkably strong root-promoting agent. A crude extract from only a third of an ounce of wilt low twig stimulated production of 12 times as many roots per mung bean cutting as controls in plain water. At the highest concentration tested, the willow rooting substance could easily produce more than 100 roots In the to-inch stem of mung bean cuttings. while control sections produced only four or five roots. Alone, it seems to have the ability to stimulate rooting unmatched by any previously known rooting substance, including plant hormones." Commercially available rooting preparations are usually synthetic plant hormones.

"The newly discovered willow rooting substance is not a plant hormone. Its root-promoting effect increases sharply when it's applied to cuttings along with plant hormones, however, and this is another important link to the true rhizocaline."

How strong is willow rooting substance?

Yellow birch cuttings are known to be almost impossible to root. In one study, yellow birch cuttings treated with plant hormones produced no roots at all. When the hormones were combined with a water solution of willow twigs and applied to the cuttings, 100 percent of them rooted. These tests also showed significant results with bittersweet, forsythia, peach and spirea.

Dr. Kawase says use of willow rooting substance could mean an end to the time-consuming bedding and transplanting now needed (or propagation of woody plants. Using it during routine transplanting of potted plants could case shock and reduce plant loss by stimulating new root growth. He even suggests we try it on seeds before planting.

To make an extract of the willow rooting substance at home, gather current-year willow shoots, remove the leaves, and cut the shoots into short pieces - an inch or less. Pack as many as you can into a container, such as a cull or mason jar. Cover with water and use a lid or plastic bag to prevent evaporation. Let it sit for about 24 hours, then drain off the liquid for use.

For softwood or herbaceolis plants, place the cuttings upright in a container with willow extract in the bottom. Allow them to absorb the extract, adding more if needed, until about 24 hours have passed. Then root them normally in soil. As usual, a plastic tent over the potted cuttings will prevent them from drying out. If you're dealing with a plant that ordinarily rook well in water, try rooting it in willow water.

Now that I think of it, willows always were the easiest plants to root - just stick slips in the ground, keep them moist, and they take hold. May-be now we can transfer something of the willow's rooting power to our other plants.

Exercise III

Review of Trainee Vivero Plan and Layout of Vivero

Total Time:

2 hours

Overview

In this exercise the technical trainer reviews trainees' vivero plan and provides comments about the process of arriving at the plan. Trainees will then proceed to the vivero site and start laying out their nursery.

Procedure

Time	Activities
15 minutes	1. Technical trainer reviews vivero plan. Makes recommendations and points out work that is excellent and that which is not so good. Discuss with group that this vivero will be their responsibility during the rest of training. They will layout prepare soil, sow seeds and keep the nursery watered. No one will remind them, but trainers will check progress from time to time.
1 hour 45 minutes	2. Trainees are now instructed to go and layout nursery. They are aware of where tools are kept. No further instructions arc given. once again trainers become unavailable.
Trainer's Note: There will be more trainees than space with which to work. Groups will have to negotiate use of tools and space with each other.
5 minutes	3. Trainers arrive and check out nursery layout. Observations are made about group work at the site. Nothing is said about process at this point. Trainers collect data.