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Clearing Non-native plants
and landscaping near Walnut Ave Storm Drain |
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Hi my name is Mihir Jain from Troop 111 and my Eagle Project at Tule Ponds was to clear a roughly 2000 square feet area of invasive, non-native blackberry plants, remove the roots, and then terrace a small area for future tree planting.
Removing these blackberry plants involved a lot of effort. The way we accomplished this task was to have one scout pulling with a rake and another cutting off any plants that were snagging. We were able to clear the area of plants after three workdays.
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The next task was to pull the roots. This was accomplished by first using a tiller generously donated by Cresco Equipment Rental in Fremont. This loosened the soil and pulled out the shallow roots. After the tilling was done, the team used hand tillers and small pickaxes to pull out the roots. This presented a huge challenge, as it was hard to locate and eliminate all of the roots.
Finally, we used flathead shovels to terrace a small area to provide an area for planting trees later on. We also raked out the remaining sticks and branches off the trail for safety reasons.
I would like to thank Cresco Rent for generously donating use of their tiller for a day. I would also like to thank my volunteers: Nupur Jain, Akhil Sundar, Charles Guan, Darwin Guan, Akshay Nanavati, Sameer Nanavati, Ryan Foo, Alex Young, Saaleh Baseer, Jamie Crocker, Neha Jain, Ira Horecka, Rahul Sengupta, Gene Horecka, Scott Kavanagh, Viraj Reddy, Mihir Bhagat, Teddy Fong, Jeffrey Han, Christopher Lin, Ron Fong, Zaki Sarwary, Stuart Rosete, Arthur Ho, Pulak Goyal, Aamir Rasheed, Ajjit Narayanan, Adam Schaps, and Haroon Rasheed. I would like to especially thank my mom, Nupur Jain who was there for me every step of the way and helped me at each workday, and also my dad, Mayank Jain who provided advice and guidance. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Blueford who allowed me to carry out my project at Tule Ponds and provided extremely helpful advice