Tree planting

For a long time now we've been wanting to increase the diversity of trees in the wood, and we've finally got round to it. This week we planted 15 assorted native fruit and nut trees (sorry, no chocolate trees to go with them...), scattered through the area we coppiced two years ago. Here's the packages as they arrived, and the wire mesh fence we bought to protect them from marauding rabbits and deer:
Each package had to be opened carefully, although the trees were pretty well packed with straw and shredded paper.
Inside, the roots were individually bagged to keep them moist:
We've chosen sites that get a good amount of sunlight to put them in, and we'll keep the coppice cut frequently near them. For each one we had to dig a hole:
and then get the tree out of its bag and plant it quickly - you mustn't let the roots dry out. Once the tree was in the ground, we spread some of the packaging straw around the base to help keep the soil from drying out, and hopefully slow down the growth of any other plants right near the tree:
While Tracy was doing most of the planting, I got busy with the chainsaw and felled a few trees to make stakes. We needed 60 in total, and although we'd made some a few weeks earlier, we still needed another 30 or so. I felled a few chestnut of an appropriate size, and made lots of piles of four stakes:
We then used the post driver to put the stakes into the ground and fastened the wire fence round them:
This will hopefully keep out rabbits and the worst of the deer. The wood looks slightly odd now with all these little cages in it, and also the adapted milk bottles sheltering self-seeded oak:
Hopefully in a few years we'll be getting some food from them, which we will of course share with the wildlife in the wood - I don't think we get a choice in that!

Autumn is clearly well under way when you look at the trees:
although we haven't had a frost yet - as soon as we do I expect the few remaining leaves will drop off. Autumn has also brought wind and rain, with results like this:
The nearer stool was dead, but as it fell it hit a live one and combined with the force of the wind pushed it over too. We'll fell them both over this winter, and allow the root plate of the live one to settle back into the ground, where it will hopefully recover.

Despite the heavy rain over the past few weeks, the seasonal streams in the wood are still not flowing - this time last year there was a waterfall going into the culvert under our main ride! I guess the ground is so dry from the lack of rain this summer that it is still acting like a sponge...

I'm back to one day a week for my desk job now, and my Dad's coming down to help for a few days next week, so we should be getting a lot done - I just hope the weather isn't too bad!

Mike

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Tree planting and more butterflies

Everything is getting very green in the woods now, the wayleave looks different even since three days ago
We got some more pictures of the "mystery tree", suggestions so far are purging buckthorn or crab apple. Comments welcome:
We did a bit of tree planting today. I know it's a bit late in the year to be doing this, but we were relocating tiny trees from places where they will never make it, like the middle of a path, so if they don't make it in their new places then there's nothing lost. We brought a few Hawthorn and Ash back from Sean and Sarah's wood, where they have thousands of them self-seeding, and we added some birch and elder from Sweep Wood. Rather than using the plastic tree guards we have, we tried making some out of brash and dead bracken:
It'll be interesting to see how effective they are against rabbits.

There were dozens of birds around in the cant we cut a year ago, more than I remember at this time last year. I wonder if this is because a year ago we'd only just finished felling there, so they hadn't claimed any territory. This year, it is full of pheasants:

Robins
and many more.

OK, on to butterflies. These were in evidence again in the wildlife corridor we created last winter, affirming the effectiveness of the plan. Peacocks were around:
and for the first time I got a good picture of a Comma, again 100m inside the wood, where we've never seen them before:
A quick update on the pond - it seriously needs digging out again, as the boar have trampled it a lot, but stuff is still growing in it regardless:

And finally, in Sweep Wood we saw more boar digging, and some droppings:
That's all for now, there's a week of work ahead, and then my parents and brother and his family are visiting for a week.

Mike

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People, planting and butterflies

Today was one of those days when it seemed like half the population of East Sussex turned up in our wood! Good job we like visitors!

The first thing we saw when we got there though was several Peacock butterflies fluttering around in our clearing. Here's one of them:
As the day was going to include more clearing up and burning, the first job was to resurrect yesterday's fire, which Cath and I got on with:
Shortly after that our visitors started arriving, and helping with the clearing up, as well as a range of other woodland activities, such as practising shelter building skills...

Charlotte, Lauren and Emily made a good start here:
But succumbed to the temptation of a tea break...
leaving Paul, Jason and Cath to finish the job:
It did the job, keeping off the odd shower, though a gust of wind did blow the cover off!
The other neat thing that happened today was that Alison and Charlie popped over from Fantail Wood - they'd been given some chestnut whips (young trees) by someone who had a few spares, but didn't want them themselves. So, they came to offer them to us. It's getting late for planting, but hopefully most of them will make it. Here they are, about 20 of them:
Paul and I got busy digging holes:
while Tracy (having been on a tree planting course) directed Charlotte and Lauren in the planting
We planted them wherever there were larger gaps between the other chestnut stools, to fill the gaps as they grow up and encourage them to grow straight, to make them more useful to people next time they're harvested. There's plenty of info on the BTCV website about the appropriate densities for different species:
http://handbooks.btcv.org.uk/handbooks/content/section/3754

We saw another interesting thing on BTCV about the history of coppicing on this page:
http://handbooks.btcv.org.uk/handbooks/content/section/3703

Mike

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