Visit to Chester Spring Marsh

This week, we visited Chester Spring Marsh, which is about a 20 minute walk from Riverdale Park.  It has been decided that our team would visit the site a few times this season as it hasn't had a regular stewardship team working there since 2004.  Consequently, it's very dense and was left to its own device, so there is a lot of maintenance work needed.

After going through a wooded path, we emerge on a beach right on the Don river.

We didn't waste any time and started pulling an incredible amount of invasives. 

We had 3 piles like this one of all the stuff we pulled including garlic mustard, stinging nettle, burdock and dame's rocket.

I also noticed quite a bit of Japanese knotweed, another highly invasive species in the valley because of its rapid growth and height.  The Global Invasive Species Database has listed it as one of the World's 100 Worst Invasive Alien Species. According to an article in Wikipedia about Japanese Knotweed "The invasive root system and strong growth can damage foundations, buildings, flood defences, roads, paving, retaining walls and architectural sites." There is also an interesting video posted a few years ago on Don Watcher's blog.

Manitoba Maple. 

We managed to clear quite a large patch of these seedlings which have had a field day on this site in the last few years.

My co-leader Christine.  She is not the one who damaged that tree, none of our tools would have such a devastating effect on a tree.  It was of course the work of beavers.  Amazingly, the tree is still alive.

Lots of burdock and it's getting pretty big everywhere on the site.

I took this picture which shows a tree that's almost completely flattened in the ground, I don't recall ever seeing something like that.

Some maintenance work

This week, we got busy cutting invasives and other vegetation around planted native species in order to give the natives some room to grow.  

 Recently planted trees and bushes such as Silver Maple and Dogwood need a little help when non native species start to grow around them. 

 The pond was pretty dry earlier this week but we've had quite a bit of rain in the last couple of days so I'm looking forward to see some water in there next week.

There are more Blue Flag irises at this site than I've seen in other parts of the Don.

We also did some mulching around the native plants to provide them with some moisture.  It was a hot night so we always make sure to drink lots of water.  

One more time for garlic mustard

Last week, we had observed an abundance of this plant and I had another look at it. I'm now pretty sure it is cleavers since it's stem is very scratchy. 

We continued working on garlic mustard but it's really the last time we can try to pull it as it's getting really tall and hard to remove without breaking it. 

New stewardship site

For the summer of 2010, I decided to switch to a different site although not very far from Riverdale Farm.  It's actually right across the river on the east side.  It's still in Riverdale in Toronto, thus the new name of my blog.  A few years ago, a new wetland was created at the base of Riverdale Park and last year was the first year a stewardship group was formed at this new site called Riverdale Park East Wetland.

It's a small site with a woodland at the back and the pond in the middle almost always dry up in the summer.  Because of its size, it can be managed easily with a small team of 4 or 5 people which seems to be the size of the team this year.

This is what the pond looks like in the middle of May so I can imagine what it will be like in the summer.  There isn't a lot of water there.

However, like any other site in the valley, there is no shortage of garlic mustard and it was about time we started pulling those.  Donwatcher has just written an interesting post about garlic mustard.

 

We also saw an abondance of this plant which according to the Field Guide to Wildflowers may be either Cleavers or Wild Madder.  If it's Cleaver, the stem should be very scratchy with recurved prickles.  I'll have to wait until next week to verify that.  In any case, these species are alien and their presence is not a good thing.

There is however a Silver Maple which is nice to see.

The team will also be working at Chester Springs Marsh.  There used to be a stewardship team there but it stopped a few years ago mainly because it's not very easy to access.  Luckily, from Riverdale Park East, it's easier to get there and we will go a few times in the summer.

I'll keep you posted throughout the summer with the progress of my new stewardship team. 

Planting at Riverdale

For the last couple of weeks of stewardship at Riverdale, we prepared a slope for a planting which took place on the last night.


This was the slope in the Spring. There were a lot of logs and vines.


The same slope in September after we cleared some of the logs and pulled as much vine as we could. We chose this slope because it's not too shady compared to most of the Riverdale site.


Stewards getting busy. We had about 50 plants to put in the ground.


We planted hemlock, witch hazel, raspberry bushes, white pine and sugar maple.


It's always a challenge to plant on a slope.


We finished late and unfortunately, the after picture is not very good. I'm still trying to figure out how to take good pictures at night. I'll have to go back in the day time to take a picture of the newly planted slope.

Benthic video

I made a video from the benthic macroinvetebrates workshop of last week.

We're back (finally)!

Stewardship has resumed last week after six weeks of interruption due to the garbage strike. As in previous years in August, it was time for the benthic invetebrates workshop. This workshop was offered to all the stewards including those of other sites. There were about 20 people in attendance. The workshop was presented once again by a member of Citizen's Environment Watch. My post from last year's workshop explains in details the process.


Stewards getting ready to wade into the ponds.


Walking in the ponds. It's hard to keep your balance.



We applied a slightly different method for the collection of insects this year. One person was simply walking in the pond in order to bring the insects closer to the surface as they tend to remain at the bottom, while a second person was moving the net back and forth in order to collect the insects.


Among the insects collected were midges and sow bugs which are the most common.