First attempt at propagating Holly

So, this is my first attempt at propagating Holly, which is a relatively expensive tree for us to buy. Collected cuttings of new growth in mid-September. Cut the cuttings quarter inch below a leaf. Trimmed off all but two or three leaves. Wet the base and dipped it in organic rooting compound.  Placed the cutting in a root trainer cell, having first poked a hole with a pencil in the general purpose compost. They will be kept outside on my mum's allotment. 2 hours work, but if they grow it saves us £30. Coming soon... Hawthorn!

Site visits

Clockwise: Well house farm, White Hall Barn, Philip at Green Owlers

 

A lovely saturday morning for some site visits. Philip and I went up to Well House farm first. This site had suffered from sheep attack soon after the first planting, so we were eager to see how things were going. Subsequent growth of both trees and grass shows that the field is now secure. There were some Hawthorn that had never recovered from being nibbled, and some strangely failed Scots pine. But other than that it looked good.

Next visit was Green Owlers. Again, our nemesis the sheep have attacked. It looked like a sheep or two had got in recently and nibbled lots of the tops out of the new trees. Very few were showing above the tops of the guards, but all were healthy inside. The owners son assured us that they were on the case as far as further sheep ingress was concerned, and they even had an electric fence down one side.

Just up the road was White Hall Barn. No sheep can get in there, and the owner has been carefully strimming around the trees to ensure them lots of light. Looks good.

Next we went up to Merrydale to look for Duncan, we collected some stakes and guards and took them off site.

Last port of call was to see a householder over by Jerusalem farm at Linthwaite. We discussed planting a windbreak down one side of the field behind his cottage. A small job for us, but every little helps.

Beautiful morning at Merrydale

A young Birch, a young Rowan, and a pile of old guards.

Lots of people are on holiday, it being August, so it was just Geoff and myself this morning. But it was a lovely morning, and we went up to Merrydale and removed more stakes and guards. We brought back about 100 stakes at the end, which saves us around £25.  I also collected a similar number of used cable ties, I am not quite sure what I am going to do with those, but at least they aren't just left on site. We had tons of cake, cherry muffins. But we only ate two each, and I brought the rest home. After a pint of Elland brewery Bargee at the Sair.

The Green Man Trail, and formative pruning

Philip, Geoff and Guy relax before the rain.

Philip and Guy have been trying to establish this weekend as an annual event and walk. The Green man trail is a proposed walk route that takes you up to the top of Pasture Wood above Marsden. It gives a brilliant view of the head of the Colne Valley. At least, it does on a day which isn't beset by low cloud and rain, in August! The weather was shockingly bad. It should have been a lovely celebratory moment, when we could look around the valley and see thousands of trees which the society has planted over the years. But we did our best in adverse circumstances, we had cake, and shared a bottle of wine. Later on, Philip, Guy and I walked down to Netherwood, and did a bit of light formative pruning there, before ending the evening in more relaxed and social manner. Beer, obviously.

Philip formatively prunes a tree.