Peasgood

Best practice for what? It’s not best for the hedge in my opinion, you certainly wouldn’t be only cutting your garden hedge every three years because it would be a right mess. It might be best practice for berry production but that’s not what they are there for, a point often forgotten or ignored. Birds living and feeding in them is purely a byproduct, it is not their purpose. Historically they would have been cut annually by hand and no higher than a mans chest. At least modern machinery allows them to be higher, whether this is good or bad is debatable. The picture posted is a pic of a badly maintained hedge, bad maintenance has likely always occurred to some degree. The purpose of the hedge is to define boundaries and maybe to keep stock in too. The hedge pictured is still defining the boundary, wire is a lot cheaper and quicker than hedgelaying.

Not drawing the cold air in through draughts like an open fire is the biggest thing imo. Other than that all the things you said

There are some that are willing to pay but most would look at it from the “no way will I get £200 worth of apples off it” point of view. Paying someone to prune your fruit trees each year will cost a lot more than the value of fruit they get in return.

Which of what I wrote is incorrect? Regarding being dependant on bees, I think that is massively overhyped. I think pollination is far more dependant on insects other than bees. Put a net over a strawberry plant to with mesh that excludes bees but allows smaller insects in and see if you get fruit or not. I do everything I can to look after bees but I do think they get more credit than they deserve. Hoverflies are probably better but not so sexy. In the same way as a nest of wasps will clear more grubs than a pair of feeding birds.

You don’t get honey bees in orchards because there isn’t enough nectar in apple blossom for it to be worth their while. Grease bands are for winter moth, not codling and tar oil winter wash is banned now to my knowledge. Codling control in a modern orchard is likely to rely heavily on pheromones rather than insecticides. The latest method is to “blanket” the orchard with pheromones to prevent mating. No mating means no baby codling boring into the fruit. If you only have one or two trees a pheromone trap from a garden centre is probably sufficient control. Better than pulling all the flowers off anyway. The only neonic that is regularly used in orchards is Calypso, that is said not to harm bees and unusually for an insecticide it can be used while trees are in blossom (doesn’t mean I would).

A granddaughter

Do the test so you can buy poison or just buy it off eBay and Amazon instead. Same goes for many other high strength ag chems.

I'd much sooner go to work than pointlessly run about in the rain. In fact, if I ever went pointlessly running around in the rain I'd be very concerned for my sanity. Besides that, I won't be doing much on the bank holidays but otherwise happily out working.

I have had work experience kids with me and I thought they were not supposed to get paid. I did pay them though and it was according to how useless they were. Some jobs they can just about manage but even simple tasks seemed quite alien to them. As an example I had to go and make a phone call and thought to keep the lad occupied for a short while I would get him to just sweep out the shed we were working in. A simple job, hardly exciting but did need doing and if he didn't do it I would have done it myself. It was immediately obvious that he had never driven a broom before and wasn't able to figure it out. What sort of upbringing have these kids had where they don't even know how to sweep the floor? The purpose is to give them experience of a working environment, they also need to experience being paid what they are worth or what you have to do to get a financial reward. Seems too many expect a lot of money for doing feck all these days.

Burn it

My local skip firm says you can't put it in the skip.

I don't usually find this much weirdness until a long way down the comments on a random Youtube thread. I'm surprised how far I got before asking WTF am I reading this for and how did I get here.

The time to get out is when you can't make a profit from it. It doesn't matter what price you buy it in at as long as you can sell it for a profit after costs. Same with anything.

I'd ask Atkinson Walker. Had good service off them at a good price before now. Might not have exactly what you want on their website but pretty sure if you ring them they will have. http://www.awsaws.uk/index.html

Plums seem very prone to Silverleaf to me and that just loves to get into wounds like that.

Can't cook or heat water without lighting mine so yes it has been lit. Lit the one in the living room too this weekend. The deal here is that I will always make sure there are plenty of dry logs and the missus can have the heating on as much as she wants (she carts the logs )

This. At least work out the cost of each. As for roof, it definitely needs to slope as the flat roof of a container allows water to collect which eventually causes a rust hole.

There are some things you are better off just not knowing.

Put it this way, it is banned by airlines.

I've heard them droning about my yard this week but couldn't see what it was. Have never seen a hornet in this country in my life.

I think the gross train weight for mine meant that if the truck was fully loaded I could still tow 2 ton. GVW was 3200kg and GTW was 5200kg. I have always wondered why anyone would spec a pickup with dual rears as the weight of the extra wheels just eats into your GVW limit. I think I twigged it recently as I "think" the dual rears give you a bigger towing weight.

I had to replace my anti roll bar because the bushes had worn it so much. Was a bit surprised that had happened and then years later the same was happening again. Wrapped it in insulation tape and new bushes to hide it.

I think you can keep it alive but I don't think it will be a productive tree. Which was most important to you? There is a lot of bark missing at ground level which will allow rots in if not already. How long would you expect any wood to last in those conditions? I still strongly suspect crown rot. http://apples.ahdb.org.uk/Crown-Rot-and-Collar-Rot.asp

If it is not simply a result of physical injury from when it was moved it is likely to be either collar rot or crown rot (I get the two mixed up). Either way there isn't really a cure, especially with a tree as far down the line as yours is. My advice would be to grub it out as it is never going to get better and there is a good chance it could infect the others. The leafless twigs are probably canker, possibly mildew. Not related to the trunk damage other than a sick tree becomes prone to various other diseases.

Some of those are just downright cruel!