BOISE, Idaho — The Lucky Peak Nursery is off and running to make sure our forests, rangeland, and city parks are green, healthy and strong for 2024.
- Right now it’s sewing season which means they’re planting the seeds for this year.
- Nursery uses vacuum suction to pick up seeds and drop them in the holes.
- Clients include the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM and municipalities like the city of Boise.
(Below is the transcript from the broadcast story)
I was out here four weeks ago when the nursery was filled with tiny seedlings. I had to ask where did all seedlings go? Michael Danielson, Containment Program Manager for the nursery told me that they packed them up the first couple weeks of January and are now frozen in coolers at 29 degrees.
Right now, it’s sewing season which means they’re planting the seeds for this year. Nursery supervisor Fran Sewell explains how workers get the process started. “We’ve got large bags of soil that we are feeding into a machine that drops the soil into our trays. Then, the trays go through and a piece of equipment that is specialized and uses vacuum suction to pick up seeds and drop them in the holes.”
They’re then placed on wooden pallets and moved over to an area in the greenhouse where they are closely monitored for watering.
Danielson says they keep a very close eye on seedlings. "This is the most sensitive time. As soon as the seedlings germinate, then it goes into a place where we will soak all the way up and then start weighing that crop and let the dry down weight tell us when we’re going to irrigate.”
Over in another building Lisa Kennedy and her team are busy getting sagebrush seed ready for seeding. I felt how much the seeds get filtered. Kennedy says it a process they have to do. "When you think about the sagebrush is about two million seeds per pound.”
And, once they meet their obligations from agencies like the U.S. Forest Service, the BLM and from municipalities like the City of Boise, it’s go time.
Education is key. Lucky Peak Nursery continues to hold workshops and scheduled tours in hopes of showing how important their jobs are.
