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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Cath in the woods

This is a guest post by my sister Cath, who was helping us in the woods today...
We travelled to the wood in the land rover. It made me and Tracy laugh because it was bouncing around on the bumps.
It even blurred the pictures sometimes!
First, I loaded logs into the trailer with Tracy, for Mike to sell to a customer later on.
While I did that, Mike and Dad fixed the pond. It started like this:
They built a dam from logs:
Then they dug out the pond, and put the mud on the dam:
Here it is finished - now it needs to rain!After filling the trailer, Tracy and I set up some tree guards for small oak trees:
We used old milk bottles to make the guards:
The guards will stop rabbits and deer from eating the little trees.

Then it was lunchtime.
After lunch we went to Mum and Dad's bit of the wood, where Mike and Tracy are going to work this autumn. We did coppicing, cutting down trees so that they will grow back again next year.
Tracy's friend Penny helped as well:
Dad cut the stems on this Hazel:
then Mike helped finish it with the chainsaw:
Mike also had to chainsaw an Ash tree that fell over last year, to bring it down to the ground:
While Mike was doing this he found part of an old bike!
The last job was to collect some poles for making stakes. Tracy and I collected them and sawed them to make the right length:
Mike sharpened them with the chainsaw:
and I helped carry them up the hill:
I was pleased to have worked hard in the wood, and I'm looking forward to going there again on Wednesday. Finally, a quick message to Emma, Katie, Pippa and the staff: "Look forward to seeing you on Thursday"

Cath

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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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