the first 17 mo, and peak aerial stand- 

 ing crop leveled off from the third 

 through the fifth growing season at be- 

 tween 1,200 and 1,300 g/niz. 



No matter now good a new marsh may 

 look at the end of the first growing 

 season, substrate stabilization has not 

 been achieved. Two full aboveground 

 growing seasons or about 17 mo are re- 

 quired at our latitude to develop a very 

 intricate root and rhizome network that 

 binds the substrate together. We took 

 samples from cores and from complete 

 0.25-m 2 (2.7-ft?) plots dug out to a 

 depth of 30 cm (12 inches) to make these 

 determinations. Belowground estimates 

 after the second growing season dropped 

 from about 900 g/m2 to about 650 g/m? by 

 the end of the fourth growing season. 



To facilitate making cost estimates 

 of these techniques of marsh establish- 

 ment, we determined the time required to 

 dig and transplant. Transplants can be 

 dug at the rate of about 150 to 200 

 transplants per man-hour and planted at 

 the same rate with persons working in a 

 two-man team. 



Transplants can be obtained about 

 twice as rapidly with mechanical equip- 

 ment. We established a smooth cordgrass 

 nursery where we used 

 broad-bladed plow which 

 substrate about 10 to 

 inches) to obtain plants. This 

 loosened the plants so that 



a tractor-drawn 

 cut beneath the 

 15 cm (4 to 6 

 technique 

 teams of 



men, walking along behind the plow, 

 could lift them out of the ground. By 

 October, the nursery area from which 

 transplants were removed in this manner 

 in spring had completely recovered. In 

 fact, the vigor of the plants in the 

 nursery was improved by thinning the 

 stand and by the action of the plow. 



When transplants cannot be used 

 immediately, they can be stored in the 

 trenches much the same as foresters heel 

 in pine trees. Transplants can be cov- 

 ered in a trench in the intertidal zone 

 and stored for 6 to 8 weeks. Comparative 

 tests indicate that there is very little 

 difference in survival and productivity 

 of transplants that have been stored and 

 those that have been dug fresh. 



At times there may not be a coastal 

 area available for a nursery. We have 

 experimented with growing smooth cord- 

 grass in a nursery near Raleigh, North 

 Carolina, about 241 km (150 mi) from the 



coast. We called it a rice paddy because 

 we surrounded it with a dike and irri- 

 gated it. Fresh water was pumped into 

 the nursery whenever it began to dry 

 out. We took transplants and seeds from 

 several different areas along the coast 

 and put them in the nursery. After the 

 first season, growth seemed comparable 

 to what we had noted in the coastal 

 nursery. 



The following spring we took some 

 of these plants to the coast and compar- 

 ed them with plants freshly dug from the 

 coast. We could detect no significant 

 differences between plants kept in the 

 inland nursery for 1 yr versus those 

 plants dug fresh from the coast and 

 planted in a replicated test on the 

 coast. Plants from seeds sown in the 

 inland nursery that had never been 

 exposed to saline conditions were also 

 transplanted on the coast and compared 

 to natural plants dug along the coast. 

 Again, there were no significant differ- 

 ences in growth and survival between 

 nursery and natural plants. Obviously, 

 smooth cordgrass can be produced in an 

 interim nursery inland from the coast. 



What about seeding instead of 

 transplanting? Can seeds be collected 

 in quantity, incorporated into the sub- 

 trate, germinated and developed into a 

 marsh? We knew that natural seeding, at 

 least in some areas, was quite preva- 

 lent. Natural seeding is important in 

 colonizing new areas. Initially we har- 

 vested seeds by hand and tried several 

 ways of incorporating them into the 

 substrate. We scarified the substrate, 

 broadcast seed, and scarified it again. 

 We also used clay slurries to affix the 

 seeds to the substrate so that wave 

 action would not remove them, but this 

 method failed. 



To harvest larger quantities of 

 seeds we built a two-wheel -garden trac- 

 tor with a cutting blade mounted on the 

 front and a reel that brings the seed 

 heads across the cutting blade where 

 they fall into a canvas catchment bag. 

 Harvesting seeds in this manner can re- 

 sult in collection of enough seeds in 

 about 5 man-hours to seed a hectare. We 

 put the seeds in burlap sacks, stored 

 them for about 1 mo in a coldroom and 

 then ran them through a small grain 

 thresher. Then we stored the threshed 

 seeds, submerged in either instant ocean 



