07.12.10: Morvah - planting trees for landowner in AONB.
Today we were planting young hazel trees, willow and Oak trees in a field in Morvah, This was the landowners idea to help create more carbon sinks. We arrived to two Collies herding us up and a few cows in the field who were very interested in what we were doing (and later interested in our lunch)!
To plant the trees we got a spade and dug it in horizontally right down to the bottom of the spade blade and wiggled it from side to side to make a decent size hole to fit the tiny tree roots and bottom part of the tree in. We placed the tree in the slit ensuring the roots were straight and spread out. After this we trampled the slit either side of the tree to close up the gap and ensure any air pockets were squashed out and that the tree was firmly in place. To protect the tree from the effects of unfavourable weather we cut to size a square of Burlap type material and cut a slit along the middle of the material, half way. This was to go on the ground around the base of the tree and was dug into place around the 4 edges by digging the spade blade into the top of it and into the ground so the material would go an inch or 2 into the ground and not blow away. After this we added a spiral plastic tree guard, so it grows with the tree, around the bottom of the young trees to prevent rabbits etc from eating them. These were held up with pieces of cane. Below shows our day of work:
10.12.10: Penhale Beachsweep. Please see previous post for Penhale beach sweep 0n 26.11.10.
14.12.10: Carrack Gladdon - vegetation clearance and burning on a SSSI.
We were working along the beautiful coastline to enhance maritime heath and grasslands which support the nationally scarce soft-leafed sedge Carex monatana seen in the photo below.
Gorse had taken over all of the cliff so we were mainly removing this and burning it to enable heathland and maritime grasses to come through. This was another beautiful location with views out to the sea where we saw hundreds of Gannets dive-bombing for fish and we saw lots of seals too.
We were here for a couple of weeks as there was so much gorse and there were days we couldn't do a controlled burn as it was far too windy. We were working on a very steep slope and dragging gorse up to the top of it to burn as it was flat up here and we didn't want to light too many fires as it would damage the site.
This photo is of me at Carrack Gladdon, tools at the ready!
