Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Drew Schuldt, natural resource coordinator for the Palouse Conservation District, tends to conifer tree seedlings stored for the district’s April plant sale.
The seeds came from the Palouse and the seedlings were grown in Western Washington. Now they are stored in Pullman in a refrigerated former ocean-cargo container for the annual Whitman/Palouse Conservation Districts’ Plant Sale.
On April 5-6 in Pullman, the two districts will sell an array of conifers, shrubs and flowering bushes including Ponderosa pines, western red cedar and quaking Aspen trees, as well as blue elderberry, snowberry and mock orange bushes.
This year’s event will be a combined effort of the two districts, which have each put on annual plant sales in the past.
Prices for the items, in bundles of ten, run in the range of $15 for western red cedar, which can grow to 150 feet tall.
“Most of the reason we run a sale like this is to build awareness of the importance of conservation planting,” said Jennifer Boie, district manager for the Palouse Conservation District. “Because what we sell are native plants, they tend to have a deeper, more robust root system, which helps with even greater soil erosion and reduction and filtering of water.”
There will be about 10,000 plants for sale, Boie said.
Pre-orders were taken earlier this year for 10 types of trees as well as several shrubs. The tree seedlings are all sold bare root, as opposed to potted, at an average 12 inches long. The conservation districts recommend that the young trees be planted immediately, but they can also be refrigerated for up to two weeks.
Boie said the most popular item projected for this year is Wood’s rose, a flowering shrub which features an open-faced pale pink rose. Almost 3,000 pre-orders have come in for them.
The trees and shrubs for the annual sale are sprouted and grown for one to two years at the Washington Association of Conservation Districts’ Plant Materials Center in Bow.
The Palouse Conservation District will host the sale at its office at 1300 N.E. Henley Court in Pullman (above the Schweitzer Engineering complex). Plant sale hours are Friday, April 5, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturday, April 6, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“It’s a great time to have folks out to our office site, and to provide technical assistance as far as increasing conservation,” Boie said. “We just hope that folks can come out and see what we have at the district.”
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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