Group D

Cody was the point of contact for our group

Cody provided a great tour of the center before we began our project. He showed us the bee hives, "stumphenge" and the rest of the grounds. The bees are an example of a beneficial insect as they serve as primary pollinators.  The stump circle serves as an outdoor classroom.

Oak Creek Center For Urban Horticulture

Many of you likely drive by this sign on 35th St every day or maybe every week, but how many of you know about the gardens located here? Student projects are completed here - like the green roof project. Flowers are grown in test beds every year. Bee hives are maintained for study by the Entomology Department, which used to be responsible for the entire site before the Horticulture Department got involved. And lots of awesome produce is grown; some of the produce is even sold to cafeterias throughout campus provding fresh locally grown food as healthy food choices for students, staff and visitors.

What we learned

I personally learned that soils in Oregon tend to be more acidic because of the large amounts of rain that they recieve. Some of the garden beds at Oak Creek were treated with lyme in order to raise the pH of the soil. The lyme is basically ground up limestone which adds calcium carbonate to the soil introducing other cations aside from hydrogen.

Soil management or overmanagement?

Oak Creek has been used by the organic farming and gardening class for several seasons. Every class plants on the same plots each year and adds compost and fertilizer to the soil each time. At the end of the season, dead plant remains are tilled into the soil after they have been topped, adding more organic matter to the soil.

Along with in ground organic matter, large amounts of compost and mulch are added to the garden plots along with organic fertilizers. Excessive additions to the soil can actually detrimental to soils if you are not careful. Too many additions can acually impact the soil pH, which is not always a good thing.

Oak Creek soil series

As shown in the soil map below, the numbered areas also apply to the soil orders they represent.

8: Amity silt loam Fine-silty, super active, mesic Agriaquic Xeric Argialbolls

14: Bashaw clay Very-fine, smectitic, mesic Xeric Endoquerts

53: Dayton sitl loam Fine, smectitic, mesic Vertic Albaqualfs


Oak Creek is primarily the Bashaw and Dayton soils, representing both the Alfisol and Vertisol soil orders. It also contains a small amount of Mollisol. As mentioned before, these soils are prime farmland and nutrient rich because of their high clay content.

How soil makes it happen

Without soil, nothing would grow at Oak Creek. The soil located there specifically is "prime farmland of state wide importance" according to the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS.) There are just over 15 acres of this prime farmland located at Oak Creek. 

Areas shown in bright green are prime farmland, areas in red indicate prime farmland if drained.

What makes this land so valuable is the fact that it is entirely silt loam (sections 8 and 14) or Bashaw clay (section 53.) Because the soil is either loam or clay, it has the ability to hold large amounts of nutrients and water because of it's high clay content (30-100%)

Because soil at Oak Creek is largely used for growing vegetable crop, lots of organic matter has been added to the soil. This combined with the clay in the soil allows for high water and nutrient retention as well as good aggregation, making it ideal for planting.

Who we are affecting

The 150+ pounds of food we harvested was a fraction of what is needed in our community, but it added to the 2000 (+/-) pounds that have been donated to local food banks this year by the center. As of September of this year, 2,188 families in Corvallis were supplementing their monthly diets with food provided by SNAPs. In total, 3,957 people participate in the program. Almost 40% are children.

This year $23 billion was cut from the US farm bill, the very bill that provides the money for programs such as SNAPs. Without donations from places like OCCUH, our community members would go hungry.

Where Oak Creek and soil meet

The gardens at Oak Creek are directly linked to soil in many ways. The soil found at Oak Creek is mostly Bashaw clay. In some areas of the garden, soil amendments (lyme) are being added in order to affect the soil pH and other qualities. In the main garden beds, many years of gardening on the specific plots has added significant amounts of organic matter over time.

Oak Creek provides donated produce to local food banks, helping those in Benton county who have limited income. During our time at Oak Creek, we harvested upwards of 150lbs of fresh peppers. If the nutrient rich Bashaw was not located at Oak Creek, and instead it was an inceptisol or entisol there wouldn't have been much to give to the food banks if any at all.