Christian's Second Year at Blue Oak

In my first year at Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, I learned so much about working at a field station in the oak woodlands/savanna. As I now enter my second year at Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, I’m anticipating exciting adventures and new experiences. With my current experience, I feel prepared to tackle the projects for the upcoming service year.

Collecting seeds from Elymus elymoides during the summer for our grass seeds collection

Who would have thought a dude from San Jose would get so interested in grass identification and collection—but here we are. In my second year, I’m going to be more involved in our native grass program. This will involve planting plugs grown from native grass seeds I collected over the summer. The vision for the project is to reestablish native grasses around the facilities at the reserve. Not only will it make the landscape more aesthetically appealing and support the local ecology, but native grasses also help improve fire safety. Since many of the natives have low silica content in their structures, they decompose faster, meaning there won’t be as much fuel for fires. My main goal for this project is to expand my knowledge of grasses and their natural history.

Living in the oak woodlands/savanna has really changed my perspective on these beautiful trees in a good way. Seeing and learning about them created a special connection. Building from last year, we want to expand and make our oak restoration project more efficient to help maintain our beautiful oak population. We had 21 sites that we collected from last year with varying survival rates. In the beginning of spring, we had high hopes for them, but they got hit hard by rodent predation. Our main culprits were squirrels, who dug up, tunneled under, and even chewed through our tree tubes!

Measuring and taking a photo of a valley oak seedling at one of our sites

Last year, we noticed that the acorns kept in the greenhouse outperformed those sown directly into the ground. We suspect it had to do with the humid environment and consistent watering. With this information, our plan for this season is to collect acorns from our various oak plots and maintain them in the greenhouse until springtime, when we’ll transplant them into the f ield. As they become seedlings, we will continue to measure their height and base diameter to add to our ongoing regeneration efforts. Even though last year we had a low survival rate, I have high optimism that this year will bring significant improvement, as we plan to implement more techniques to keep the rodents out of the tubes. My goal for this project is to learn more about how oak seedlings develop during their early stages.

With these two exciting projects planned for the year, I’m most excited to continue my community outreach project with schools from East Side San Jose. I had the privilege of hosting two schools last year; however, I’m looking to expand the program to include more groups. I’ve been reaching out to schools over the summer and connecting with them to bring students to the reserve. The goal I have envisioned is to connect students from ESSJ to nature. Being from San Jose myself, I went through the same experience and wished I’d had opportunities to be out in nature. Seeing the fruits of my labor through community outreach has been a truly special experience. To end it off, I want to thank Blue Oak Ranch Reserve for taking me in for a second year.

A group picture post hike with the hiking club from Cristo Rey San Jose Jesuit High School