wrsni

[ame] [/ame]

Good man, thanks for the offer. No, I get what you mean, books are only a guide and it's up to yourself to take from them what's suitable and apply it to your own circumstances. Deer isn't an issue for me nor is it likely to be as where we live is landlocked by quite a major river and our main north/south railway line, but they're plentiful around an estate about 10miles away and apparently they can be extremely destructive. So far I've added blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants, gooseberries, wild strawberries and wild raspberries propagated and transplanted from the surrounding area and damson and victoria plums which have been elsewhere on the farm for years. Several varieties of pears, apples, and cherries, but I also have newly planted wild pear, wild cherry and crab apple which I hope to graft on to from the productive varieties so they can grow larger and compete better for light in the future. I'm not worried about having fruit high up, we'll get to it OK! I also added sweet chestnut which shouldn't do well this far north but so far is doing very well. That's on top of the hazels, rowans, guelder rose and such like which were part of the original planting. But I want to take things further as it develops and look at more perennials. As it was a new planting I was able to design in a few southerly facing corridors to catch the sun but but what's more fascinating is how some unexpected places are developing their own wee microclimates within the woodland and these could be used to target particular things. It's actually much more interesting than intensive farming ever was!

BMW boxer engines (motorcycle) would be prone to using a right wee drop of oil in some cases on 10-40. Running them on 20-50 usually reduces oil consumption considerably and as they're air-cooled (until recently) the extra protection at high temperatures does no harm either.

Good call. Anywhere in the UK, and unless there's something particular specified different, you don't ever go far wrong with 10-40.

So far I've found two books which seem fairly relevant to the UK and I think that's one of them. I marked them on Amazon and they should by magic turn up here as presents at Christmas. Much, much, more stuff available specific to America which I'll leave for now. Experience with the planting and species selection for it has let me see that you don't need a lot of books if the ones you have are good books! I can also get access to our Dept of Agriculture Library which I'll go to for a day in the new year and see if there's anything there that grabs me, they've quite a lot of research papers and such as well so there might be something useful in that too. They also have a lot of the books that I seen on the net and I can check them out in more detail. Normally I would probably have had at least one of Martin Crawfords books but I've had other dealings with him and he ultimately didn't conduct himself in a very decent or professional manner so I would prefer not to support him any further.

That's an excellent link, thank you. Primarily interested in edibles at the minute and specifically perennials. Woodland is four years old and starting to flourish nicely so I'm now concentrating on looking at ways to enhance it and as the whole permaculture ethos holds great appeal to me anyhow, agroforestry/forest gardening seems a logical step.

Good question, I'll have to ask him next time I see him. Knowing the builder there'll have been some attempt made at speed checking it.

It's a sound theory up to a point. The problem would be that such a change would require something cataclysmic to trigger it and then there's no way of knowing how any of us or the environment we live in is going to come out of that. But still, as a former intensive farmer I know in the pit of my stomach that what I'm doing now is actually much more in tune with nature and the environment than what I was doing then.

Thank you, it's a particular struggle to do anything at all constructive with trees over here as everything in the countryside is agriculture based, and apart from maybe shelter belts on the uplands, trees have no part in agriculture (apparently!). But I was pig-headed enough to plant out 8 acres of prime arable land with native woodland, so I'll continue in the same vein trying things out. More interested in seeing what can be grown within it rather than just grazing, thus the "gardening" description, but happy enough to study the principle first and be open-minded about where it takes me. Thanks for the link Kevin, looks like there could be some interesting stuff about there.

As part of my continuing aim to create a productive woodland in as many ways as possible as opposed to just planting an area of trees*, I would like to look increasingly in to smaller scale agroforestry or possibly in my case it would be more accurately described as "forest gardening". Could anyone recommend any decent books on the subject other than Martin Crawfords? Thanks. *not being derisory of anyone "just" planting trees, still a very worthy and worthwhile thing to do.

I'll pass that on. Just one confession, they didn't build the V8 in a day, they had one prepared earlier!

That's the traditional way of doing it. They sit long enough and dry sufficiently to be able to hold their structure and then they're set on their ends three or four together leaning against each other which is known as "fitting". They then dry like this and get hauled out late summer, they have to be cut, fitted, and drew out over one summer. Big advantage over machine cut is the quality, they only cut the black peat with the flough on the top being discarded whereas the machine mixes it all together. Very much all a dying art though.

The "Grassmen" franchise is a big thing over here now so a friend of mine got together with a few others to make a derivative of it. And yes, the V8 "Fergie" actually does exists, it's not camera trickery! [ame] [/ame]

I'd want to know why the injury hadn't healed before pumping in cortisone. Maybe it just needs more time, bit of physio, something like that. Get a second opinion if necessary.

Elderberry, or Bur Tree as it's mostly called over here, is an odd one. It'll grow in the most random ridiculous places and seems incredibly tough, but I've tried to transplant several of them deliberately in to my woodland edges and all so far with little success. We've a few excellent specimens of it various places around the farm but it just seems determined to only grow where IT wants to. Farmers hate it because of it's invasive nature but it's actually a lovely wee shrub, and both the blossoms and berries have great medicinal value also. Control it certainly but also give it some space to flourish where you can.

I think that's it, just a wee bit early for me though so I have no actual recollection. I know he was with Crimson in their "prog rock" era before they went all freaky, I've played some of their stuff from that time on my show.

Some of his early stuff with King Crimson was pretty good too. I suppose it gave an indication of what was to come from him.

Shredded already!

Is that quote direct from the BBC?, well whoever it's from can dream on! Firstly, London is heavily pro-remain, fortunately much of the rest of the country is pro-leave. Lets see how the Lib-Dems fair elsewhere! Secondly, they'll most likely have harvested quite a lot of anti-Heathrow expansion votes as well. Honestly, clutching at straws.

Brilliant man, absolutely my favourite politician anywhere. Even over Nigel!

Possibly, certainly seems to be an issue with water circulation anyhow.

Try telling that to a townie after they've seen that headline!

But it's not a fair headline is it? "Incorrectly positioned.........", in front of it would have been a correct representation of the story.

This is the correct answer. A place I used to do some part time work for had an LPG side loader which was for ever giving them hassle. All it needed was the water level kept fully topped up, even with a cold engine the coolant is still relatively warm enough to keep the vapouriser working.

Coming around to the idea of a flail head for my Kubota 3.5T. A guy who I have dealt with before in my JCB days is distributor for Ghedini Fabio heads. All my previous dealings with him have been good, he's a sound guy, but there's not a lot of info about on the Ghedini stuff. Wondering if there's any feedback on here before I take it further.