Dig for victory!

More nursery work, and no pictures because it was too muddy to get the camera out. Worked on creating an edge to the hard standing area, and digging a drainage ditch to take water away. Very very hard muddy work. One day soon it will all be over and we can plant some trees. When they arrive that is.

Acorns! Acorns!

In an ongoing effort to cut costs and be more sustainable, I have planted 360 plus acorns, all gathered in the Lake District this week. Half of them were already rooting. The main danger now is that mice will get them, I lost half those I planted last year to mice. For this reason they will be kept above ground level until growing. The root trainer trays have been in the Society's possession for some years, but haven't been used, and the compost to fill them came from expired tomato grow-bags on local allotments. So there were no costs at all. If they all grow then this will save the Society £190.

Nursery work

The start of tree planting is still a couple of weeks away, when we can get all our financial ducks in a row, and get trees delivered. In the meantime we have been doing essential work at the Nursery.

We spent the morning moving vast amounts of wood chippings created by the contractors who cleared the site for fencing. Also we acquired a large number of big, heavy, slightly broken paving slabs from the local cricket club -these will be used to create an area of hard standing for us to work on and store materials on. And we began to clear and level off the area for that hard standing.

All very, very, hard work. But very gratifying in its way (I hope I still think that when I am aching tomorrow morning)

Should Heidi be forbidden from wearing that t-shirt again though? Sober environmental types us.

Nursery work

This morning we busied ourselves tidying the nursery, and discussing the groundworks that need doing. As you can see, we had a bit of a play with the blue drainage pipe, working out how much we had and how far it would go. We also cleared rubbish, and gathered rocks from the cleared area, to use as hardcore for over and around the pipe. Picture below is of me trying to pull up some of the vast amounts of black liner which was buried in the soil. We intend to install the drainage pipe and sort out the hard standing work area on the first day of the season, Saturday 30th October.