CSR East Ribbon Cutting

October 8th brought about CSR East’s official ribbon cutting celebration!  Together with the Twin Falls Chamber of Commerce and City of Kimberly officials, we had a great gathering with lunch and discussions.  Our new office was a huge hit!  Enjoy our video stills of the ribbon cutting.

Gathering outside prior to ribbon cutting.

Steve speaking about CSR's goals and history to the crowd.

Steven accepting a gift from the Twin Falls Chamber of Commerce.

Watch out, Steve has scissors! Steve and Starla Paulsen prepare to cut the ribbon.

Cutting the ribbon with some of the CSR staff looking on!

Spring & Summer 2009 update

Hi folks!  Despite the down economy, it has been a busy spring and summer for CSR, Inc. and we’ve missed posting a lot of information on the blog.  Among the many things that happened in the past few months, we wanted to share with you our biggest events:

New nursery manager enlarges native plant availability & selection

Thanks to James Eells, our new Native Nursery Production Manager, CSR now has a plethora of plant material sizes and species to choose from.  James succeeded in growing a number of new-to-CSR species including Heartleaf Arnica, a number of Buckwheats, Longspur Lupine, Blazingstar, Coyote Mint, and some new Penstemons among a few.  We also have multiple sizes of many plants from 10 ci to 10 gallon and are geared up for further expansion next year.

Our beautiful nursery.

Blazing Star, Mentzelia laevicaulis, grown at the nursery.

Native sod comes of age

Fantastic news!  The native sod planted two years ago was test cut earlier this year and determined ready for commercial sale.  The photo just doesn’t do it justice.  After established, this sod will require ½ to 2/3 less water than a traditional bluegrass lawn and is superiorly adapted to our hot full sun exposures in Southern Idaho.

CSR's native sod field, ready for cutting and sale.

CSR becomes native vendor for John Deere Landscapes

After meetings and tours of our nursery facility, John Deere Landscapes has added CSR to their list of approved vendors for native plant material in Region 9 (WA, OR, ID, MT, WY, UT).  We can now provide them the quality native plant material they need for their customer’s jobs all over the Northwest.

RECOVERY money goes to restoration

As the government enacts the stimulus plan, money has appeared on the market for restoration and reclamation projects galore.  CSR has actively searched out and bid more government projects through the Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and US Fish & Wildlife.  Over the past few months, we’ve been awarded a number of bids including spray work for the SNRA around Stanley Idaho, Tamarisk control in Utah, and a fantastic job for the Hanford National Wildlife Refuge in Washington that includes collection, grow-out, and planting of natives over two years.

CSR Wyoming office moves to bigger, better location

The Wyoming branch of CSR has transitioned from a “closet” to a larger office space in Rock Springs.  We now have plenty of space to handle walk-in clients and all 10 Wyoming employees and meetings.

CSR East opens to rave reviews

Affectionately named the ‘Brewhaus’ after the prior business, CSR’s new office is open in Kimberly Idaho!  We now have adequate space for the Biology, Design, IT, and Sales departments as well as a state-of-the-art biology lab for soil crust experimentation.  CSR’s Construction, Stewardship, and office staff that remain at the original office are happy to have personal space again, and the design staff’s temporary Twin Falls location has been closed.  The official ribbon cutting will be held on October 8^th.

Don't be decieved, our new office and lab space is in both the tan and blue buildings.

It’s Allready Spring, in our greenhouse at least.

…..Our nursery crew has been working over time the last few weeks, and all the hard work is starting to pay off.  Many different species of native plants are stating to germinate, everything from grasses to flowering forbs.  It has been really fun for everyone around here to pop in and see how all the little guys are doing.

Shawna has been busy inoculating the SilkyLupine, Lupinus sericeus with Microrizae.

Our beautiful Longspur Lupine, Lupinus arbustus is doing very well.

Mules Ear, Wyethia amplexic is also jumping up.

Loads of grass species.

Our crowning achievment, it is extreemly rare to see a Brown’s peony, Paeonia brownii growing in a pot.  This little guy produces one of the most amazing flowers you have ever seen.

All of James’ hard work is paying off, the greenhouse has new little babies every day.  It is also a popular place for all the CSR – Inc employes to step in from the cold.  Great job guys!

Shows

…..Lots of shows this time of year, seems like every week some one is heading off some place for another one. Here is a shot of our both from our last show in Salt Lake city.

Living in Idaho: Thinking about switching to native plants?

…..Two Idaho landscapers will teach you how at the Foothills Learning Center on Saturday. The event is free.

Going native is a good resolution for 2009, especially when it comes to your own habitat.

Two Idaho landscapers are offering a free, daylong program about native plants and xeric gardening on Saturday at the Foothills Learning Center in Boise.

The Center is home to a new native plant garden that looks like a field of rocks and dirt for now, but will start to show a little green this spring.

Susan Bell, a horticultural educator with the University of Idaho Ada County Extension Office in Boise will lend her expertise at the Saturday program, along with Steven Paulsen, general manager and restoration ecologist with Conservation Seeding and Restoration Inc., in Kimberly.

Paulsen told us more, and asked us to pass on this message to program participants: If you want him to identify a plant for you, bring a clipping of the plant or a photo. Don’t rely on verbal description alone.

Q: What can attendees expect on Saturday?

A: We’ll talk about plant species, functionality, realistic time lines, cost. All the issues that come up when you rethink your personal space to include natives.

I do talk about the difference between xeric and native concepts. A lot of people confuse those terms.

Q: What’s the difference?

A: A native plant, one that grows naturally in an area, is an extension of the habitat. It includes features for birds, animals, insects, soil. Everything is there.

With a xeric plant, you are targeting water use, and the value for you, of that plant in the landscape. Native does not imply xeric.

Q: There’s more and more talk all the time about the reasons to grow native plants here in the Valley. What are the top selling points from your perspective?

A: Natives are tough, resilient. They let you get away from the traditional concepts of planting everything in the spring.

Natives have a ‘habitat function’ for animals and insects, and promote a connectivity of the landscape.

I’m not taking the desert and breaking it apart by putting a patch of bluegrass in the middle.

Natives promote responsible use of resources – less need for water, fertilizer.

A native landscape is less expensive over time, and less intense from the maintenance standpoint. [Note: a healthy native landscape tends to crowd out weeds].

You’ll spend less time cutting, watering and fertilizing. More time watching, with the occasional flower-picking and photo-taking.

Q: And natives do provide year-round interest?

A: No question. You have to talk about birds, moths, butterflies that are dormant. The native winter landscape harbors them. You have color, structure.

Looking out my window right now, I can see red dogwoods, rusty-colored junipers, basin wild rye that’s easily seven feet tall, Idaho fescue with a nice green patch of new growth at its base, elderberry.

All this stuff is going on. There’s a lot of action in the winter.

Anna Webb: 377-6431

Tractor Time, and Seed Success!

…..This spring we seeded for one of our newest stewardship customers, Aubry Springs, in Picabo Idaho and had incredible success.  Every species we seeded germinated and many of the grass species especially great basin wild rye grew so much that some areas looked like a lawn.  This fall we decided to mow these fields to help reduce the annual vegetation and expose lower vegetation to the sun.  It is simply amazing and gratifying to see how well our native restoration has worked after just one season without any supplemental irrigation.  And this is in a water year that was two inches below normal.

…..Much of the vegetation being mowed was annual sunflower that had finished growing.  Mowing provided much needed ground litter and organic material, while at the same time hopefully getting some of the seed from the sunflowers back on the ground to grow another year.

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…..I do love my office.

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…..Look at the beautiful seed rows!  After one year of growth these reclaimed agriculture fields are allready providing beneficial habitat.  Anybody out there want to stop farming and save the planet, give us a call.

1,000 Springs Festival

…..This past weekend CSR, Inc. participated in the 15^th Annual Thousand Springs Festival near Hagerman, ID. It was an entire weekend event. The booth was set up on Friday afternoon in preparation for plant sales Saturday and Sunday. The weather couldn’t have been nicer for a weekend in September. The Plant and Sales Team talked with a lot of home owners and were able to recommend native plant alternatives to traditional home landscaping in addition to selling some of our home grown native plants.

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Native Plant Education In Filer

…..Today CSR, Inc. was fortunate enough to participate in a 4^th grade Field Trip in Filer. A couple of staff from our Biology team talked about the difference between weeds (noxious and invasive species) and native plants. There were also presentations given on composting and recycling and the Hagerman Fossil Beds from other members of the community. It was a whole day affair complete with hot dogs and smore’s for lunch. At the end of the day’s festivities they were able to visit with Bernadette and take a tour of our plant nursery. All in all this day was a lot of fun and a great opportunity to educate future generations on some of the benefits that native plants have to offer.

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Biology News

…..The Biology Dept. had another busy year in the field. Our vegetation monitoring in Wyoming is complete and our team is back in Idaho processing the data. We are reconstructing our database to handle the various types of information associated with each monitoring location such as vegetation quantitative and qualitative data, soil information, and seeding prescriptions. In addition we collected site specific GPS data that we are incorporating into a GIS database which is exciting and has helped out tremendously with accurately estimating seeding materials. It seems as though the summer raced past with us holding onto the buckle of the reins. But it didn’t race so fast that we didn’t get the time to appreciate some of the beauty Wyoming has to offer.

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Slow Downs and Seed Ups

…..Things in the Stewardship department have been slowing down a little lately, most of the spring weeds are taken care of and fall work isn’t quite here yet. This slow down has afforded Lance and I to do some seed collection on some species that we had located during the spring. Timing is everything for seed collection, and we hit it dead on the nose when we were able to to collect two pounds of bulk Blue Eyed Grass seed. Today we collected seed from a native gerainium as well as some beaked sedge. These small batches of seed allow us to grow out and offer genetically local, native plants. These were not grown in a green house some where, collected from god knows where. These seeds represent the genetics of remaining plant population from this area, and are extremely valuable. It takes more work than just picking up the phone and ordering some seed or plants, but the end result is definitely worth it.