woodland – We bought ‘The Land’!!!

Trees!

A wet start to the weekend here in Cornwall (don’t know what else I expected, really!) but we managed a few hours on the land before the rain really set in and Ashley retreated to his ‘workshop’ and I back home to de-mud the dog and get some studying done.

But what we DID manage to get done felt quite exciting! A local tree surgeon (who we have very helpfully become friendly with) donated around 20 tiny oak saplings to us, that had been left over from a project of his, and today we started planting them! We got 8 in before the heavy rain set in, and aim to get the rest in tomorrow.

Squint and you’ll see the sapling! Ashley is very pleased!!

We have a couple of majestic oaks bordering the land, and hopefully by the time they start to die back, these will be almost as magnificent.

Although wet and miserable, the wildlife is started to get in to the swing of spring. Today we saw and heard a greater spotted woodpecker and our resident kingfisher (who was very busy!). We can’t wait for the day that we are in the right place at the right time to sneak a photo of him to share, but just seeing him darting up and down the river is such a treat. Certain plants are brightening up, promising excitement of spring growth.

Opposite-leaved golden-saxifrage in the woodland.

This afternoon, Ashley started a woodland experiment. He had seen a video of someone propagating hazel with cuttings (although they did admit to limit success rates) and wanting more hazel in our woodland and hedges, decided that it would do no harm to give it a try ourselves.

He has taken all sorts of different sizes of cuttings, from chunky stems to wispy branch tips. If none take, we will have to try the layering method – although that will be tricky with the locations of our only hazel trees. We have tried planting the hazelnuts that fall in autumn, but the squirrels always seem to find them! Once the tractor is out of the polytunnel, I might actually be able to use that for protection!

A thorny issue

Our woodland is absolutely jam packed full of bramble. We would love to one day own some goats to help keep the bramble at bay, but we currently have neither the time or funds to house, maintain and retain them. So for now, we must manage the brambles ourselves. Although using a strimmer would quickly clear areas, this would of course cut back every other plant and potentially harm animals – overall it just feels quite destructive. We may need to do this to get ahead in some areas, but where possible, we will pull the bramble by hand…..

Last Sunday we got cracking with an area at the back of the woods. There is an established patch of wild garlic (Ramsons) and a lot of Bluebells in the area which is gradually becoming more and more overgrown, so we decided to start there.

How it started – the picture doesn’t really show just how brambly this area was!

This seemed like an achievable goal, aided by the beautiful, uncompacted, loamy soil. We donned our welding gloves (superior thorn protection!) and got started! A mere 5 hours later…..

We actually did so well with this that we moved onto the area to the right of the picture, which borders the river. We can’t wait for the Bluebells to put on a show!

Ramsons and Bluebells in this area near the river, April 2023.

Wild garlic abounds!

Hi there! How was your Bank holiday Monday? Ours wasn’t quite as productive as it might have been, but enjoyable nonetheless.

After a dreary and damp morning and the weather not looking likely to pick up any time soon, I decided to brave the elements and go outside to pot on some seedlings. The leeks (Sultan F1), tomatoes (Garden Pearl) and cauliflower (Romanesco) all got new pots and I sowed some radish (a black variety) and red spring onions into a couple of larger pots. Once this was done, the sun did actually shine for the rest of the afternoon!

Later in the day, Ashley and I went for a little walk around a friends woodland. There is a sizeable Ash tree that came down in bad weather a few weeks ago and Ashley has been given permission to cut up and take as much as he’d like – we are hoping it will be enough to fill our wood store for next autumn and winter. We are down to our last few basketfuls of logs now! Apparently, Ash is considered a really good wood for burning as it has a very low moisture content even when freshly cut. So a summer of it drying in our wood store should be adequate. The woodland floor was carpeted in Wild Garlic (or Ramsons) which were looking particularly beautiful in the early evening sunlight. Every year for the past few years, I have intended to make something from wild garlic but have never got round to it. I WILL look up some recipes this week and go and collect some!