The acorn harvest is coming to a close early here on the valley floor. Beginning in mid-September, Sacramento Tree Foundation staff, interns, and volunteers have been busy locating, learning about, and carefully harvesting this year’s nuts that will become next year’s seedling trees. The regional acorn crop was average this year, perhaps another victim of the ongoing drought. Drought has also decreased the availability of food for wildlife resulting in high demand from hungry critters for the acorns that have been dropping. Another possible factor affecting this year’s yield is that last years yield was high, anecdotal evidence suggests that high acorn years are typically followed by low acorn years.

Volunteers received specialized instruction at two acorn harvest trainings at Springview Park in Rocklin and at Effie Yeaw Nature Center in Carmichael. This year, we trained our 200th acorn harvester! These newly trained harvesters along with returning volunteers have collected over 4,500 high quality, hand-picked acorns thus far. Harvesters have been gathering acorns independently and along with other volunteers during the four community acorn harvest events we held. Our intern carefully logged and stored all of these acorns. With two refrigerators already full, volunteers will continue to bring in acorns until we meet this years goal of 5,000 acorns. After a rest in cold storage, these acorns will be directly planted at reforestation project sites and grown into seedling trees with the help of Seed to Seedling students and our in-house propagation program. Come next fall, many of the resulting seedlings will be ready to be planted by volunteers who will grow the next generation of urban native oaks. Many thanks to all the volunteers and partners who have supported this important annual project, including ICF, Cub Scouts, and the staff at Effie Yeaw.

Interested in planting with us this year? Check out our tree planting events and register now!

Are you an elementary school teacher? Consider participating in our Seed to Seedling program.