Green Earth Plant Sale – Great Results!

Green Earth Plant Sale
An early morning photo of our booth at Green Earth Plant Sale. This event was held at the McDonald’s farm in Naperville which is where they grow delicious and fresh organic vegetables for their CSA members

This was the first “give-away event” this year and the weather was perfect!

We were able to find homes for about 100-150 Sugar Maple seedlings.

We’d like to sincerely thank Green Earth Institute and the Conservation Foundation for letting us attend. We encourage everyone to sign up for the organic veggies from the CSA and go healthy this year!

And special thanks to Rob McMillan of the Freeman Funding Group for helping at the event.

We Got “Computerize”

Instead of a paper sign up form, we used an online Google form that was pre-loaded into tablet at this event so people could just enter a zip code to show us where they planned to plant their seedlings. We learned some interesting things (see below)!

Planting Locations

We asked people where they were going to plant their trees.

Each blue dot on the map at right represents a zip code where at least one person said they would plant a tree.

Click here to see an interactive version of this map showing more info.  (How cool is that!)

Time to Plant

We asked people when they thought they would plant their trees, since this is an important factor in survival rate. Most people said within 1 and 2 days (the red and blue areas):

Expected Time to Plant

What Does This Mean?

These results are encouraging! The data we collected shows that:

  1. People are interested in and willing to plant large trees such as Sugar Maples even though they take a long time to grow and get quite large.
  2. The seedlings we are giving away are getting a wide geographical dispersal. They are not being clustered together in one local community near the event.
  3. The seedlings will most likely be planted quickly (within a day or 2) which enhances the chance of a successful transplant and long-term survival.

Note that this data is only from one event. However, when the data from previous years is entered, we expect it will be similar because we gave away seedlings at the same type of events last year.

So yes, these are encouraging results. After all, each of these trees can grow to nearly 100′ and live 100-150 years. And all that time, they are converting carbon dioxide to oxygen and filtering out many other air pollutants so we can all breathe easier. They are also doing a long list of other beneficial things for us!

Giving away Sugar Maple seedlings the old fashioned way, one tree at a time.

However, despite these encouraging results, there is still much work to do just to keep up with all the trees that are being cut down every day due to Emerald Ash Boar and other diseases, storm damage, natural aging, and the endless growth of civilization.

So, we’re making good progress, but we definitely keep going!