Written By: Ru Xue Jiang
AYLUS Dix Hills Branch works with the Long Island Plant Initiative and Saturday Stewardship to produce viable native plant seeds fit for Long Island as a part of our ongoing initiative of building a healthy ecosystem within our community on March 4, 2023. During this event, AYLUS Dix Hills members worked to sort pots—-thrashed, strained, and sifted seeds from the harvest——filtered the chaff, dust and seeds, and cleaned and organized working stations.
Volunteers worked with the plant species Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). Volunteers first placed sifting grids (seed cleaning screens) over plastic garbage cans with a cloth bag, then placed the plant species they were working with on top. Using wooden blocks and rubbing them against the plant, volunteers were able to separate seeds from the plant. These seeds will be used to bank, grow, and provide community members with native plant species. Banking, meaning storage, will be at the scientific facility Greenbelt Native Plant Center in Staten Island in specific conditions to preserve the native seeds for future generations. This protects contemporary genetic traits and maintains them over time despite reproduction. Some of the other seeds that will be set aside will be used by the Stewardship to plant. Native plant seeds are grown at LINPI, and are available for the Stewardship and others to plant. This will allow us to continue doing preventative measures against invasive species next year. With the remaining seeds, community members who are working on their own projects in their backyards to remove invasive species can get native species to plant in their backyard instead.
To further this goal, volunteers organized pots and nutrient rich soil that can help get the community started with planting native species. Although seeds individually are one of the access points to native species, because community members may not be as knowledgeable on plant germination, they may not be able to germinate into fully fledged plants. To not thrawart others from growing native plants, LINPI is growing the native plants for the community members. Using recycling means, past plant pots were sorted between stickers and no plant stickered pots, so the stickered pots can be spray painted to grow the plants with labels. Broken pots were thrown out to prevent volunteers from hurting themselves. The nutrient rich soil has large clumps that volunteers broke using their hands. The clumps can often be problematic to seed growth by rerouting roots to be more cramped than they should be.
Finally, because the harvested seeds had other materials mixed inside of it (chaff and dust), using a machine, the materials are filtered. In a contraption with a fan, two filters, and an automatic shifting plate, all of the material was separated. The chaff and dust will be composed while some of the seeds can be used to germinate plants using cold stratification, the mimicry of called seasons, to loosen the seed coat.
The AYLUS Dix Hills Branch working with the Long Island Native Plant Initiative (LINPI) and Saturday Stewardship helps reduce the impact of invasive species at a local level, and AYLUS Dix Hills will work to further this initiative in the future.
Volunteers: Ru Xue Jiang (2 hours and 30 minutes), Sara Kong (2 hours), Nadia Khan (2 hours), Jason Cheng (2 hours), Ivan Wu (2 hours) and Ming Chen (2 hours).
