Merrydale once more

There are an awful lot of stakes and guards up Merrydale. Serves us right for planting so many trees. Myself, Philip and Dave this morning, with a box of homemade biscuits. Philip and I left for an hour to go and visit a landowner and discuss some planting next to the M62. Sadly my camera had run out of batteries, so no pictures of today. But trust me, we worked hard and collected around 120 stakes to be reused, and filled a bag of old guards to be disposed of. Another lovely Autumn morning.

More Merrydale

Yet another trip up Merrydale to merrily gather stakes and guards. Just myself, Guy and Dan. Lovely September morning, almost an Indian Summer day. The cake of the day was coconut.

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.