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Lots of excitement right now about the expansion of our Making Trash Bloom project to two new counties, but so much has been going on at the project’s original site, the Shenandoah County Landfill, too. On Earth Day in April, we hydroseeded Phase 2 of the Shenandoah site. Hydroseeding - spraying seeds and bright teal hydromulch through a giant machine - isn’t normally recommended for native seed mixes. So why try it? Because it is recommended for landfills, and consequently, is the go-to means of seeding (turfgrass) for most landfills nationwide. Scaling Making Trash Bloom up regionally, or even nationally, will be far more efficient if landfills can use the equipment they already have. So, we’re experimenting to find a native seed mix and a hydroseeding approach that work together, even if it takes many iterations! We’ve been collecting data all summer on the results of the Earth Day seeding, and have used that to develop new experimental seed mixes and hydro techniques. We’re about to seed Shenandoah’s Phase 3, consisting of four different plots, each with a different hydro method. Conservationists don’t normally have much hydroseeding knowledge, but landfill operations people boast a career load. We’ve been having a lot of fun brainstorming with the Shenandoah operations team, and can’t wait to see how our mutual experiments turn out.
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