Baton Rouge Green

Are YOU or someone you know interested in urban agriculture, urban forestry, public outreach, and doing the good work in your community?!

Join the Today!

We have a lot of incredible projects coming up with Baton Roots, BREC, East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority, and Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension Center, so now's a great time to hop on the Tree Train to Agroforestry Equity-town!

tis the season😭

Don't commit crape murder. Cutting back crape myrtle trees is not, and never has been, the preferred way of handling these trees. In addition, it is not healthy for the trees in the long run.

Cutting back crape myrtles creates large wounds that can serve as points of entry for fungal decay organisms. Pruning like this shortens the life of the tree. Read more about proper crape myrtle pruning: https://tinyurl.com/PruneCrapeMyrtlesProperly

Students, are you thinking about registering for the ISA 2023 Virtual Event? Email [email protected] to get your unique code for free registration! Thank you to The Davey Tree Expert Company and Bartlett Tree Experts for sponsoring students!

Hop-hornbeam (Ostrya virginiana) is, in my opinion, an underrated understory tree. It has a ton of wildlife value, feeding everything from butterflies, moths, and beetles, to birds of all sizes. It is also gorgeous in all seasons. Hope-hornbeam can also tolerate a fair amount of sun provided conditions don't get too dry. Best of all, it has a very widespread native range that extends from parts of Canada and throughout the eastern US, all the way into parts of Mexico and Central America. In this vid, you can see how it got the "hop" part of its name. Each nutlet is encased in a papery involucre, giving the whole infructescence a hop-like appearance 🌳 Music by @thrice #trees #nativeplants #ostrya #nativetrees

BREC is currently still soliciting feedback for their Imagine Your Parks campaign! Please don't miss this opportunity to help inform their masterplan, so if you want to see more trees, fruit trees, bike paths, etc, THIS IS YOUR TIME

Imagine Your Parks 3 - Parks with a Purpose | BREC BREC operates public park and recreation facilities and programs throughout East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, USA. This award-winning agency is a member of NRPA (The National Recreation and Park Association) and has been nationally accredited and recognized as one of America's premier recreat...

At a time of year when most trees go dormant, the American Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) is just starting to bloom. While blooming this late in the year comes with significant risk; wasting precious energy at the potential cost of frost damage, it also allows this plant to take advantage of a less competitive niche.

This plant is incredibly important for active pollinators during cooler parts of the year, who benefit from the pollen and nectar offered by witch hazel when very little is left in bloom. During cold and frost, the long petals begin to curl to offer protection to the inner workings of the flower. If the weather is too cold, pollination and fertilization may be low, and much lower than neighboring plants that capitalized on warmer seasons. After a flower is pollinated, development of the seed is on hold until spring, taking a full year for witch hazel fruit to develop and disperse.

American witch hazel is native to much of the the eastern United States and parts of the Midwest. This tree is an excellent food plant for a variety of native wildlife and the seeds beloved by many animals including turkeys and grouse, and mammals like coyotes, squirrels, opossums, chipmunks, and foxes. The seed capsules resemble small explosives and seeds are expelled explosively with force, making a sound when they emerge and hit the forest floor. Most often, this shrub will be found in damp areas of the forest, along floodplains or stream banks. An extract of the plant is used in the astringent witch hazel.

Many insects feed on the foliage and bark including weevils, bark and leaf beetles, gall flies, leaf bugs, and aphids. Larvae of the Witch Hazel Dagger Moth (Acronita hamamelis) and other species of moth depend on this species for its life cycle. It is a beautiful tree worthy of your own backyard!

Like and follow our page, anBrinton Run Preserve for future native plant facts!

Exploring the History of Tung Trees in Washington Parish and St. Tammany - The Bogalusa Daily News Delve into the fascinating history of tung trees in southeastern Louisiana, their impact on local agriculture, and their current status.

Hey 𝗕𝗔𝗧𝗢𝗡 𝗥𝗢𝗨𝗚𝗘! 👋 You're Invited! "Sustainability = Profitability: a Food, Production, and Marketing Practices Panel" The LSU Hilltop Arboretum!

📅 Date: Friday, December 15th
🕒 Time: 5:30 PM - 7:30PM
📍 Location: LSU Hilltop Arboretum

𝗥𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗡𝗢𝗪: https://bit.ly/3uQdmqy

This in-person event brings farmers and food businesses together to discuss how sustainable practices can lead to increased profitability. Learn from leaders in the field as they share their insights, strategies, and success stories. Don't miss this opportunity to explore the intersection of sustainability and profitability in a dynamic panel discussion.

Join us for:

🚜 𝗙𝗔𝗥𝗠𝗘𝗥-𝗟𝗘𝗗 𝗣𝗔𝗡𝗘𝗟 𝗢𝗡 𝗦𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗕𝗟𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗔𝗖𝗧𝗜𝗖𝗘𝗦: Learn about sustainable practices as a way to increase sales opportunities for Louisiana farms.

📝 𝗗𝗙𝗔𝗣 𝗣𝗔𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗪𝗢𝗥𝗞 𝗔𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘: Personalized help to fill out discrimination paperwork for disadvantaged farmers and producers who attempted or received FSA products. (Section 22007 of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers financial assistance for farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners who experienced discrimination by USDA in USDA’s farm lending prior to 2021.)

Free and Open to the Public!

𝗥𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗡𝗢𝗪: https://bit.ly/3uQdmqy

This event is a partnership between BREADA, Louisiana Central, Market Umbrella, SPROUT and the Louisiana Small Scale Agriculture Coalition.

Acadiana Food Alliance
Red Stick Farmers Market
Central Louisiana Local Foods Initiative
Louisiana Central
Market Umbrella

It’s National Cookie Day! 🍪🌲Our favorite cookie is a tree cookie, a slice of a tree that can show us quite a bit about a tree’s life.

Tree cookies include: Outer bark which protects the tree; Phloem which transports food; Cambium which are stem cells that become new xylem and phloem; Xylem to transport water; and older Heartwood at the center of the tree which provides strength and stability.

While we see leaves falling now, trees are also preparing for the winter on the inside, too, conserving energy and slowing down their growth to form darker rings called latewood.

Trees will speed up their growth again in the spring and summer when water and sunlight are plentiful, forming a lighter, and typically thicker, layer around the trunk and branches known as spring wood. These rings are clearly visible on the tree cookie and tell the story of the life of the tree.

Citrus Tree Registration closes first thing Wednesday morning if you want your tree(s) harvested THIS Saturday! Help us and the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank in this ultra low citrus production years by reaching out to your friends and neighbors!

Citrus Pick is this Saturday! If you have a citrus tree with excess fruit, register your tree to be harvested. All citrus that is collected will be donated to the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank! 🍊

Baton Rouge Green

Register your tree: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdcmKY4ZZCJ_58MgYhSP3GxG3WOJ5V9lABJilFbUT60k9g_WA/viewform

! Now is a great time to plant trees in your yard and in your community, but be sure to rinse the roots of container-grown trees to correct the circling roots and to spread the roots out to ensure that they grow outward. Widespread roots make the tree more drought tolerant and more wind resistant, which are important characteristics here in Florida.
Read my article on how well my winged elm grew even though it had been pot-pound for too long. https://greengardeningmatters.blogspot.com/2020/07/winged-elm-beautiful-florida-native.html

With the ending of the planting/establishing chapter of our project, begins the next chapter of sustainability, public education, harvest, and expansion with our partners, Baton Roots!
So, we are looking to hire a brand new Agroforestry Equity Coordinator! - If Agroforesty, Public Outreach, Urban Planning, and building Equitable spaces [w food security & canopy access] sounds like fields that you hope to find yourself in, please go through the link below to apply!
Background: through the first phase of STF, our team planted 100 citrus trees across 8 different East Baton Rouge Parish Housing Authority sites and community gardens while both teaching and learning from the residents. We hope to dwarf that number over the next years with planting 1,000 (!!!) canopy, native and fruit trees across EBRPHA and BREC!
Join the today!

We have an incredible opportunity for you, !

https://batonrougegreen.com/about-brg/news/currently-seeking-candidates-agroforestry-equity-coordinator-opening

📢 Drought Relief Possible Later This Week

Guidance is giving a pretty strong signal for a rainy pattern beginning on Thursday & continuing into the weekend. The early outlook suggests 2"-4" is quite possible, with locally higher amounts in play.

The main takeaway from this study is that ensuring the survival of planted street trees is vital for providing the most benefits in the future. Each tree that dies means a loss of $40–$50 in annual benefits for the cities studied. If planting and establishment (i.e., mulching, watering) costs are considered and net benefits are calculated, a high survival rate can shorten the time it takes for a group of planted trees to pay off. The results of this study back up the importance of monitoring the survival and growth of planted trees. If the three-year “survival rate” is below 96%, future planting and maintenance activities should be adjusted to improve that percentage.

2023 needs YOUR help!
Due to the severe December 2022 freeze combined with the late season freeze that same winter, has taken a beating! 💔
That's why we need you to call your friends, your mama, your mama's friends, and all your cousins too to get the word out that we and the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank are in desperate need of the fruit-laden trees still out there!
With your help and your voice, we can still make this public sourced event a success. Reminder - all of the fruit harvested here goes throughout the 's network of 11 parishes in our region. Go to the link below to register your trees or just find out some more information

https://batonrougegreen.com/events/city-citrus-pick-event

Puffy, misshapen fruit is mostly a problem on young, vigorously growing satsuma trees. As the tree becomes older, the occurrence of puffy fruit decreases. Puffy fruit on older trees results from fruit that sets on late blooms during periods of warm weather.

Puffy satsumas have thick, wrinkled rinds and appear pear-shaped as compared to round, smooth, healthy fruits. When peeled, the satsumas look dry and do not have any juice.

Little can be done to prevent puffy fruit. But good growing conditions, proper fertility and pest control are always helpful in maintaining the health of your citrus trees.

Spending a weekend with Dr. Charles Allen is always a treat. This year, program participants will visit a pitcher plant bog and learn how to identify carnivorous plants and do a little moth sheeting. You just might see a Luna moth!

Visit AcadianaMasterNaturalists.org to apply.

Just say no to "Volcano Mulching."

Mulch should never be piled up in a mound around the base of the trunk. This can lead to problems for the tree. Piling the mulch deeply around the base of the trunk exposes the trunk to dark, moist conditions. Decay organisms can take advantage and invade the trunk.

When mulching trees, the mulch should be spread out in a flat disk about 2 to 4 inches deep and pulled back slightly from the trunk. As the mulch thins out and decays, add more mulch as necessary.

Not only does this protect trees from string trimmers, but keeping the area mulched and free from grass encourages faster growth on young trees. Research indicates that in some cases, trees that were mulched grew twice as fast as trees that were not.

Here are six native oaks you can find in the eastern United States. If you’ve read Doug Tallamy’s “The Nature of Oaks,” you know that native oaks are the most important host trees for butterfly and moth caterpillars in North America. In addition, if you like to watch or listen to songbirds, native oaks provide the caterpillar food source for baby birds better than any other tree group.

As with other trees, additional features like the habitat, buds, acorns, and bark are often necessary for confident identification. Many oaks hybridize between species as well, sometimes making identification to species challenging from just the leaves.

Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor) can be found in bottomland forests and wetland margins across the Midwest and Northeast. There are some scattered populations in the Piedmont, though, and it’s also used in landscaping. The ‘bicolor’ in its scientific/botanical name refers to the difference between the dark green and glossy top surface of its leaves and the much lighter, silvery-white undersides.

Post Oak (Quercus stellata) grows in upland forests with clay soils in the Southeast. The leaves have a diagnostic Maltese cross shape and many star-shaped hairs (trichomes) on their lower surface.

Overcup Oak (Quercus lyrata) grows in bottomland forests of the Coastal Plain and in the Gulf Coast states. You’ll occasionally find one growing in the Piedmont, but they’re planted in landscaping too. Overcup Oak leaves are widest above the midline and typically have 7 lobes. The best feature to identify them may be their acorn, which has a cup that nearly encloses the entire nut.

Chinquapin Oak (Quercus muehlenbergii) can be found in the Midwest but it is sometimes planted in landscaping. In the wild, it’s often found around limestone outcrops. It has some resemblance to Chestnut Oak, but the leaves of Chinquapin Oak have sharper teeth along the margins. Chinquapin Oak leaves are also much smaller, typically being less than 5 inches long.

Chestnut Oak (Quercus montana) grows in upland forests of the Appalachian Mountains and adjacent Piedmont. The leaves can be up to 10 inches long and they have many rounded teeth along their margins. The key difference from Swamp Chestnut Oak leaves is that Chestnut Oak leaves are proportionately narrower.

Swamp Chestnut Oak (Quercus michauxii) grows in bottomland forests of the Coastal Plain and Gulf Coast states, but scattered populations occur in the Piedmont too. Its leaves are much wider above the midline and it has lots of rounded teeth along the leaf margin. The leaves closely resemble Chestnut Oak (Q. montana). The key difference between them, though, is that Swamp Chestnut Oak has proportionally wider leaves. It also differs in habitat and distribution range from the Chestnut Oak. Its scientific name honors the French naturalist André Michaux, who was the Royal botanist of King Louis XVI and an early explorer of the southeastern United States.

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Thank you, Erlingson Banks for supporting 's community canopy!

Mary Erlingson and Cathy St. Pierre attended Baton Rouge Green's event held last week. This event included local art, live music from Alabaster Stag, and a silent auction to support Baton Rouge Green’s mission.

📸: Mary and Cathy are pictured here with Baton Rouge Green Board Member, Tine Neames.

We LOVE working with the community! This was an especially "turnkey" project for us where we only offered technical assistance, planning, and on the ground demonstrations/organization! We're always happy to help BUILD CANOPY

, y'all make us feel SO LOVED! Thank you to everyone who came out to despite the forecast to support our community trees!
Extra special thanks to all of our Canopy, Live Oak, and Cypress Sponsors and supporters for making this and community building work possible. We also can't forget to thank our event partners including food & beverage AND MUSIC partners
Y'all strap in for 2024 bc it's going to be an amazing ride 💚

📣 Breaking News: The U.S. Department of Agriculture today released its new Plant Hardiness Zone Map, the national standard by which gardeners can determine which plants are most likely to survive the coldest winter temperatures at a certain location.

https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/

The USDA describes the latest map, jointly developed by Oregon State University’s PRISM Climate Group and the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, as the most accurate and detailed it has ever released.

PRISM, part of the OSU College of Engineering, stands for Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model. The previous version of the plant hardiness map, also based on PRISM data, was released in January 2012. The new plant hardiness map incorporates data from 13,412 weather stations, compared to the 7,983 that were used for the 2012 edition.

Viewable in a Geographic Information System-based interactive format, the map is based on 30-year averages (1991 to 2020) for the lowest annual winter temperatures within specified locations. The 2012 edition was based on averages from 1976 to 2005.

Low temperature during the winter is a crucial factor in the survival of plants at specific locations. The latest edition of PRISM’s signature product, the 30-year climate normals, was released in December 2021. PRISM releases new climate normals every 10 years, taking away one decade’s worth of data and adding another.

U.S. Department of Agriculture
OSU College of Engineering

This week a group of about 60 leading voices and advocates in urban wood utilization have converged on Memphis from across the country for the national Urban & Community Wood Academy.

These folks are casting a vision for how to rescue urban wood and put it back to work, and are building the collaborative relationships required to make it happen.

This is a great visual to explain why we work so hard to protect green space around the San Marcos River.

Spanish moss is NOT Spanish--it's native to the SE states, not Spain.
Spanish moss is NOT a moss--it's a flowering plant in the pineapple family.

"Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a flowering plant in the pineapple family (Bromeliaceae), so it's not a moss at all. (Mosses are non-vascular, non-flowering, spore-producing plants.) It's an epiphyte or air plant found in damp areas near waterways or swamps because it absorbs its moisture and nutrients from the air, so while it hangs from trees, it's not a parasite like mistletoe and does not rob the host tree of water or nutrients.

"Spanish moss is covered with trichomes (scales or flaps) on its surface, which are what allows this air plant to absorb moisture from the air and to catch the dust particles, which are needed for nutrients. the trichomes also slow down transpiration so it doesn't dry out too quickly.

"It's a vascular plant, which means that it has vessel cells that carry water throughout the plant. Once the vessel cells (also known as xylem) form they die and become tough and wiry, which is what holds these long plants together. While strands of Spanish moss can be yards long, in reality, such a festoon usually consists of many individual plants that are only about 10 inches long that are tangled together."
Read my article for more details:
https://greengardeningmatters.blogspot.com/2018/05/theres-nothing-spanish-or-mossy-about.html

*LOUDER* The silent auction can't be stopped! On top of everything you saw in the last post, we also have:
Ornement Artisan Jewelry making jewelry and jewelry photography look GOOD - 1
South Coast Organizers giving us the hard truths but good medicine while helping us ORGANIZE - 2
The Brow Lady herself, Whitney McMorris gonna make those brows pop just in time for the holiday parties - 3
Ghada Henagan Ceramics contributing the big cozy and bee-utiful mug w a cool front rolling in! - 4
Baton Rouge Succulent Co. letting nature be our ornaments - 5
Rent Dat came to our rescue when a vendor fell through and now they can come to your crawfish boil rescue too! - 6
Lily and Sparrow's bourbon board fit for fireplace season - 7
w the fab purple clutch - 8
Chase Mullen is always a rockstar - 9
And last but certainly not least Burned In Time the amazing wood burned BOIL BOSS paddle - 10
Don't sleep on all of these incredible pieces! Supporting and YOUR community canopy never felt so good. Thank you so very much to the makers and givers who help make our work possible! 💚

Tickets available for $45 until noon tomorrow. $55 at the door.

https://batonrougegreen.com/events/green-up-red-stick-event

We have great news and good news for 2023!
The GREAT news is that our forecast says that we have 50-80% chance of rain in our forecast over the next several days! This is not a silver bullet for our severe drought, but we hope this is a sign of the wet El Niño winter that has been predicted
The GOOD news is that the Main Library at Goodwood is an incredible, huge space that can accommodate all of the music, food, silent auctions, and fun that we all know GURS brings each year. Tickets can be bought through the link below
is thankful for this incredibly inclusive space, its staff and all of our sponsors that continue to support us and our mission!

https://batonrougegreen.com/events/green-up-red-stick-event

BIRD QUIZ: Here is a little brown bird photographed in Louisiana in early November. Do you know which species it is? Leave your answer in Comments and we'll post ours at the end of the day. Thanks to Robbin Mallett for sharing this photo with eBird and the Macaulay Library archive.

The 2023 is upon us! Register those fruit-laden trees as well as your helping hands to harvest through the links below.
On Saturday December 9th at 8am we'll send dozens of volunteers to hopefully harvest thousands of pounds of fresh, local fruit to benefit the Greater Baton Rouge Food Bank!
This incredible passion project is only possible through the sponsorships once again by Bof Tree, Lamar Advertising of Baton Rouge, AS WELL AS the dollars we receive during our annual fundraiser *wait for it*
~~~~ it's all connected, man ~~~~

Volunteer Registration: https://forms.gle/427TE7MU3CdruKsD7
Fruit Tree(s) Registration: https://forms.gle/Qb9yyYLKNc5btLGL6

The latest issue of Tree-sources is out now! Stay safe and earn CEUs with the Z133 Video Safety Course, and be sure to check out the newest list of webinars as we near the end of 2023
🌳📰 https://ow.ly/vANg50Q5seA

Do Pine Needles Acidify Soil? Learn whether or not pine needles actually acidify the soil and how you can use them to help improve your garden, whether as mulch or in compost.