In early April, Save The Bay’s Habitat Restoration Team (HRT) set out to learn about large scale native seed production and vernal pools! HRT traveled to visit our friends at Hedgerow Farms in Winters, CA and the Jepson Prairie Preserve in Dixon, CA.

Growing Native Seed

Hedgerow Farms is a high quality large-scale native seed production farm that grows seed for anything from small landscaping projects to massive restoration efforts. They are able to do this by applying farming techniques to native plants. By growing native plants from different ecotypes—plant populations adapted to specific local environments—then processing and cleaning their seeds, Hedgerow Farms supports hundreds of revegetation projects across California.

In 2018, we gave Hedgerow Farms 2 lbs of seed that HRT collected. They then multiplied and grew 205 lbs of seeds for Save The Bay to use at multiple project sites in the Bay!

Vanishing Wetlands

Next stop, HRT visited the Jepson Prairie Preserve to learn about vernal pools, which are seasonal shallow wetlands that fill during the winter and spring and dry during summer and fall. Vernal pools are incredible temporary wetlands. These 50,000 year-old pools support entire lifecycles of unique crustaceans, provide critical habitat for species that depend on them to survive, and have beautiful wildflower blooms found nowhere else. Throughout the summer and fall, vernal pools are completely unassuming open prairie but once winter and spring roll around, they transform into true wetland magic. These pools are biodiversity hotspots, often supporting rare and endemic species uniquely adapted to these fluctuating conditions, making them vital yet vulnerable ecosystems.

An endemic species that can be found in these seasonal wetlands are Tiger Salamanders. They rely on vernal pools for their reproductive cycle as they are used for their breeding grounds and aquatic larval phase. We had a very rare sighting of a baby Tiger Salamander!

Thank you to our friends at Hedgerow Farms and the Jepson Prairie Reserve for sharing all their wisdom and knowledge about these special places.