For those of you following along, Connecting Our Waters started a native plant growing program in the fall of 2019. Seeds were collected from the Wild Ones headquarters and shoreline projects around Shawano County – including Glas Coffee and Whispering Pines.
Milk jugs were planted in November and early December of 2019 by volunteers and then placed outside for the winter.
Once all the snow melted, we were waiting with baited breath to see if our seeds would start to sprout.
As of April, a number of our milk jugs have seedlings in them!
One volunteer, Sara Escher, took home 5 milk jugs after our November planting party. She kept them in her back yard and on April 9th followed up with Connecting Our Waters to let us know 4 of her 5 milk jugs had seedlings!
Emily Henrigillis, regional watershed coordinator for Connecting Our Waters, has been housing 50 milk jugs at her house. As of 4/26/20 about 20 of the jugs have seedlings.
The plants that are currently succeeding in the milk jugs are: beardtongues, goldenrod, columbine, pale purple coneflower, joe pye weed, yellow coneflower, nodding onion, boneset, rough blazing star, bee balm, cardinal flower, black eye susan, prairie blazing star, cream gentian, and cup plant.
The growth process has been exciting to watch and we hope we are successful in getting all our plants to grow.
We will be holding a plant sale near the end of summer or early fall in an effort to get more native plants out on the landscape.
We are always looking for volunteers to assist in the program so please contact Emily if you are interested! emily@fwwa.org 920-851-6472
