July 6, 2022 - By Ken Sterner, DOF Senior Area Forester, and Josh Bennicoff, DOF Nursery Manager In eastern Mathews County, on the Chesapeake Bay, near the community of Diggs, sits a patch of woodland called “Old House Woods.” It is probably one of the most haunted places in Virginia, the subject of legends and spooky tales. Numerous locals claim to have seen ghost ships floating overhead, ghosts of British Revolutionary War soldiers digging... Read More
April 18, 2022 - By Jim Schroering, DOF Longleaf Pine Coordinator and Ellen Powell, DOF Conservation Education Coordinator Forestry usually takes place on a landscape scale. But some forestry work requires meticulous attention to detail. Just ask the team of DOF staff who recently undertook the painstaking process of grafting longleaf pines. Grafting requires splicing a scion – a growing stem with desired characteristics – onto an established rootstock of the same species. You... Read More
March 14, 2022 - By Todd Groh, DOF Forest Resource Management Program Manager Can you feel it? The temperatures are rising and the daylight is lingering. New life is pushing up through the once cold soils, and we’re seeing the yellow blooms of daffodils across the Commonwealth. Spring is almost here, and the trees know it too. Red maples are often the first trees to wake up in Virginia forests and along roadways, their... Read More
November 10, 2020 - By Jim Schroering, DOF Longleaf Pine Coordinator, and Ellen Powell, DOF Conservation Education Coordinator Fall is harvest time in Virginia – corn, soybeans, apples, cotton, pine cones … Wait, pine cones? Pine cones, indeed. The 2020 longleaf pine cone crop was harvested at the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation’s (DCR) South Quay Sandhills Natural Area Preserve during the week of October 12 and at the Department of Forestry’s New... Read More
October 26, 2020 - by Patti Nylander, Senior Area Forester Every year the Virginia Department of Forestry (DOF) puts out the call to citizens across the Commonwealth to collect acorns to be planted at the Augusta Forestry Center (AFC) in Crimora for next year’s seedling crop. The acorns are prepped for planting through a rigorous process — to separate the good nuts from the bad — that involves a huge fan, a 55-gallon drum... Read More
October 2, 2020 - By Ellen Powell, DOF Conservation Education Coordinator There’s an old saying that you plant an oak tree for your grandchildren. There’s some truth to that, as oaks are not the fastest growing trees. But along the way to maturity, they provide benefits to us and to the environment. Shade? Check. Beauty? Check. Acorns for hungry wildlife? Check. Oaks do grow acorns, but just as importantly, oaks grow caterpillars. More than... Read More
April 15, 2020 - In late March, DOF personnel completed a longleaf pine grafting project at the New Kent Forestry Center (NKFC). The longleaf pine seed orchard at NKFC has been developed in response to a need for consistent crop production to support restoration efforts for this diminished species. Read more: From the Brink! The Effort to Restore Virginia’s Native Longleaf Pine, 2014 Status Report This year during a three-day period, a crew collected... Read More
March 11, 2020 - By Senior Area Forester Scott Bachman The official start of spring may be only weeks away, but forester Scott Bachman doesn’t want to breeze past the (briefly) snowy landscape of southeastern Virginia. The scene highlights a unique landscape feature that DOF is working to protect – the northern seed source of longleaf pine. Several weeks ago, the southeastern counties and cities of Virginia received their first and only snow of... Read More
March 15, 2018 - by DOF Senior Area Forester Scott Bachman It is not quite spring, but the signs of spring are abundant at the New Kent Forestry Center. The photo below shows one of the first signs of spring. The loblolly pine trees appear to have grown paper bags on their tips! These contractors are placing bags on the trees to protect the soon-to-be receptive pine flowers (Strobli) from wind-blown pollen. That... Read More
March 9, 2018 - by Area Forester Manij Upadhyay I went to Garland Gray Forestry Center, Courtland Virginia to learn about pine seedling production last week. Our nurseries have been growing quality seedlings based on research and experience for 100 years. The day that I arrived at the nursery people were lifting seedlings from the bed with the help of a machine called a lifter. Do you know how seedlings are grown in nurseries?... Read More
