Thursday 25 February 2016

More mulching trials

The purpose of mulching is to suppress weeds and retain moisture until a tree is established. Commercial plastic matting is not only expensive, but it's often non-biodegradable. For individual trees, I like using cardboard. It's free, easy to handle and will rot down in a fairly short time. I know there are inks, glues etc. that are probably not ideal but it's a lesser evil than some of the alternatives. I recently completed my winter tree planting (up to 2,051 trees!) including some more dogwood on an unused corner. The previous planting here had been, shall we say, "disrupted" by an over enthusiastic use of a strimmer (not by me) which had cut through the spiral and stripped the bark without snapping the stem.


Strim that!



 The new trees were planted and a piece of cardboard was cut to fit over the stem and the supporting cane. These were weighed down with logs and then covered in woodchip. This should act as a decent mulch for some time, especially as the logs will take a long time to decay. 

Planting on a slope
 Some violet willow was also planted but on a sloping bank. This time, some synthetic membrane was used and it was found that the supplied pegs did not hold very firmly, especially in the wind. To counter this, some stout wooden stakes were roughly made with an axe and hammered in. These not only held the membrane down but also supported longer logs which really weigh it down. The logs also act as barriers to prevent the woodchip layer gravitating down the slope. We now have 6 species of willow growing:
  • goat willow
  • grey willow
  • common sallow (osier)
  • almond willow (black maul)
  • yellow willow
  • violet willow
The last 3 will be used for basketry and decoration once properly established. The almond willow isn't growing as vigorously as I'd have hoped but I'm told it often takes a year or two to really get going.