The venerable Klootchy Creek Giant, an ancient Sitka spruce near Seaside, is in the news much these days.

At somewhat around 200 feet in height, this spruce shares the honor of “World’s Tallest Sitka Spruce” with a similar giant in Washington’s Olympic Park, called the Quinault Lake Spruce. Damaged in the Dec. 14 windstorm, park officials, arborists and county commissioners are struggling to come up with a plan to save or protect the aging and ailing forest giant. The Klootchy Creek tree is estimated to be between 500 and 750 years of age, and was saved from harvest by a logger who, recognizing its unique age, pressed for its preservation. Now the site of a popular roadside park, about 100,000 people a year come to pay their respects to the big tree.

The Sitka spruce, Picea sitchensis, is an indigenous spruce that lives in an extremely narrow microclimate of coastal estuarine conditions, occurring from Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula to Cape Mendocino, California in a band up to six miles wide. Its ideal habitat has heavy winter rains, warm winter temperatures, cool summers and heavy summer fogs. They are perfectly adapted to damp or wet soils. The Sitka spruce is well-known as a commercial product, for its light weight and tight grain wood fiber. Huge numbers of board feet were harvested from coastal counties for the war effort in the 1940s. The tree has been successfully introduced into commercial distribution in other regions, too. According to Brit A.G. Hillier, “It is one of the most important afforestation trees and is the most commonly planted conifer for this purpose in the British Isles, particularly in the north and in Wales … originally discovered by Archibald Menzies in 1792, and introduced by David Douglas in 1831.”

In recent years, the spruce has fallen into disfavor as a plantation tree because of a problem with one pest, the Spruce bud worm, which has a tendency to lay eggs in the terminal bud, which frequently results in die-back of the terminal shoot. This can create a tree with two leaders, said to lower the tree’s commercial value. This cultural problem, plus the rise of commercial monoculture tree plantations featuring Doug fir, has resulted in fewer recommendations to include the spruce in reforestation strategies.

At our place, a short way from the house, is a row of seven spruces, about 120 feet tall. One is about 20 percent shorter than its brothers, because of past die-back; you could call it a snag. Another tree in the group has a recently killed top, but the rest of the tree is vigorous. A short time ago, a red-tailed hawk alighted on one of the branches and the resident crows had a very vocal fit. These trees are probably 80 or 90 years old, about as old as our house. On a disputed property line, they withstood some former owners’ clear cutting. A forester might dispute their beauty or commercial value, but we can see the value of this stand with each flicker, eagle, raven and hawk that alights on a branch for a time.

The Sitka spruce is perfectly suited for Clatsop soils, especially if they are wet. Please: Stop the fear of big trees! Stop magnodendrophobia! Plant more spruce to replace the old-timers. Give them respect; don’t carve them into wooden mushrooms. Give them lots of room. Consider nominating them for a city or county tree. Take a census in your community and offer them protected status.

This past year, Timber Press released a sleeper of a book that will forever change the way you garden – I guarantee! In “Teaming With Microbes, A Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web,” authors Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis combine years of practical garden experience with new material on soil science and soil food webs gleaned from a lab in Eugene, run by Elaine Ingham, Ph.D.

Find out why there are two types of naturally occurring nitrogen and why annuals and grasses prefer one type and perennials, shrubs and trees prefer the other. Learn how to take a “census” of life forms in your garden to determine how well endowed your own soil food web is. You can also find out why the authors recommend never using chemical fertilizers in concentrations higher than 10-10-10. Learn about the differences between brown and green compost, when to use one or the other, and why the authors recommend using no manures in compost.

Still not sold? How about learning why vermicompost – using earthworms – is incompatible with regular composting? You can also learn about the joys of cooking – er, gardening! – with AACT, or actively aerated compost tea, and find out how to make your own tea composter! This amazing book will give a new dimension to your gardening life and you will be forever glad you picked it up.