We are officially 3.5 months out from the Great Rivercane Harvest of 2025. Something that was on our agenda this year was finding a more efficient way to conduct rivercane harvesting and transplanting for use in restorations. In previous years, we have tried to harvest the cane by hand with shovels, and if you have any idea about rivercane structure, you may understand how difficult this is. Rivercane are connected underground via “rhizomes”, which are thick woody structures that create great soil stability and erosion control; however, it also makes it incredibly difficult to transplant. 

As it goes, we looked for a more efficient method this year, which ended up being a more modern approach. In May of 2025, we used the skid steer with a bucket, to gently scoop underneath the dense rhizomes and remove the intact roots, with about 1 meter of “culm”, or the stalk of the cane still remaining. We kept impact minimal by recreating a “selective harvesting” approach, removing strips, rather than large sections.

After removal, we created our own tree root ball by placing dense sections into burlap netting, which we would tie with a natural fiber rope. This would allow for easier transplant success and assist us in our two methods of installation, bag removal and leaving it within the bag.

The newly formed Rivercane Root balls would now go to three different places: The Cottage Drainage Restoration (a restored gullied landscape with ephemeral drainages that has soils that are periodically wet, Twin Bridges (our working regenerative farm along the creek in an understory environment), and in our native nursery placed in containers.

How are they doing now?

We are happy to report that as of now, most of our rivercane are still alive, with some of them growing new sprouts already!

Major issues: The main problems we have seen occurring with our transplants has been over sun exposure, water needs, and other vegetation encroachment. The rivercane that was planted in the sunnier areas like the Cottage Drainage have had a more difficult time growing and thriving, as it was quite a hot summer, with temperatures regularly into 100 degrees F around July here in Arkansas. This created a drier environment than they would have preferred, but we assisted them with weekly waterings. This may potentially pose as a hassle for certain restoration projects but was well worth the effort for us.

The rivercane in Twin Bridges showed success in both bagged treatments and unbagged, both seeming to grow normally. They required much less maintenance, as they retained more moisture in the shade, however they did get a few waterings over the months as well. Lastly, the nursery culms are still alive, growing and greening up each day. They are on a regularly scheduled sprinkler watering system, and we will see how they end up once they are in the ground.

Almost all treatments that were planted in the ground were affected by other vegetation. Vines seemed to take advantage of these new “trellises” for them to climb. They restricted the rivercane’s leaves, preventing them from capturing light for adequate growth. This did require manual removal of these vines, as well as other competing plants such as Johnsongrass to prevent the plant from being shaded out.

Cottage Updates

Twin Bridges Updates