Summer Days at Last

What a scary April and first half of May in the FG. So cold,wet and windy terrible news for the setting of fruit on the cherry trees with very few pollinators around only the late flowering types succeeded and its the same with the plums. I have noticed that a lot of species have produced smaller leaves and some such as the walnuts and mulberries have only just started to leaf out.

But luckily there is always some successes and here is the biggest surprise of my FG year so far.

The Maritime pine  P.pinaster, only established 6 years ago showing both male and female cone forming flowers.

the Butternut,J. cinerea showing its male catkins



Juneberry Almalenchia canadensis

I hosted Coppicwood College's Members Day here are some of my guests admiring some late apple blossom.

This was a free event for the Members , anyone can join as a member its only £12 and you get many great benefits. The next event will be a day horse logging. Go to http://www.coppicewoodcollege.co.uk/ to apply.



Time to Mulch

Well all that rain in April certainly had an effect,despite the low temperatures the grass celebrated in style, so it was out with the scythe and on with one of the most important tasks of the year "Mulching".Here are my rules for mulching:

1. Wait until the ground is wet or I should say throughly soaked before mulching.
2. Weed around the base of the plant.
3. Use this opportunity to feed your plants, knowing that anything you put down will be easily absorbed.I feed mine with urine, wood ash and compost.
4. Cover all this with cardboard.
5. Cover the cardboard with mowings, or as in my case recently scythed meadow grass.

And there you have it, no more to do for at least 3 months except for a top up with more mowings.

Here is Cornus mas Jolico (you can get this from http://www.agroforestry.co.uk/) with its dressing of compost and wood ash (sorry no pic of the urine application available).

Now for the cardboard which I get from Go Mango the great Organic Heatth food shop in Cardigan.

Out with the scythe, I work with an Austrian scythe and use a variety of blades depending on the vegetation.

The finished job including the label for which I used a slate recovered from my roof together with a bamboo stand, cut from my own plant.Only another 200 to go then, better get a crack on.