spandit

I've got some topsoil for sale if anyone is interested. Just have to dig it out from my ditches. I can also offer house painting activity weekends for very reasonable prices

Does spraying not risk damaging the tree itself?

Well, with 22 stakes and 18 tubes left over, plus about 4 shrubs (which I'll shove in the hedgerow tomorrow), it's done! May not be the biggest forest, or the best planted, but it's mine and now I can just watch it grow...* Last one: * once we've gone round and tucked all the weed membrane in... Shouldn't take long

Just looked on the Tubex site and you're right, they are that much each.

Putting the oaks into the tubes is a pain too... Try threading it through weed membrane too!

Did the number of stakes & tubes match? Seem to have more tubes left over than stakes at the moment. Fortunately, I have some of my own spare spirals as ran out with shrubs to spare

Good to know. I'll look into replacing them. Out of interest, when you buy "one" Tubex tree guard (for about £1.20), do you get a single tube or a nest of 5?

They were diddy but we used full guards - to cram them into spirals would be a bit difficult as they were quite bushy

No. Scots pine but no fir

Can you post it to East Sussex?

A lot of the whips looked pretty similar and not having the same numbers of each, I just mixed them up and grabbed at random. Ironically, I can now identify whips a lot easier after planting hundreds of the buggers

Tried to plant random but it ends up in straight lines anyway. I have planted the mix more or less at random, though. It's not really enough wood to worry about extraction too much - at widest point it's probably about 50m thick.

I'm not going to uproot them all now! They're at 2m spacing and I'm hoping it will encourage them to grow straight. A lot of the other bits are spaced more but we were running out of space. Light at the end of the tunnel now - reckon another 200 and we'll be nearly there...

Frankly, I'm fed up with planting bloody trees... Only about 300 to go now but everything hurts

And gopher wood...

They'll look nice once all the membrane is properly tucked in

They give you a 60% discount. Although I haven't been officially invoiced yet, the agreement, which isn't particularly onerous, quoted me for just shy of £1,000 inc. VAT. That's for 1075 tubes and 425 spirals, with canes and stakes. Getting a bit bored of the process now - this morning I've done about 100 but it's cold and windy. At least I'm getting through my audiobooks in short order! By counting the stakes that are left, I reckon we've got about 400 trees to go, plus about 100 shrubs, which are easier to plant.

Wow, 100 varieties? I'd have liked some copper beech, wild pear & ash but none of them were available through the MOREwoods scheme. I did ask for sweet chestnut but they'd sold out, which I suppose is good news for the future coppice industry

We didn't have much of an option of start dates but at least the ground isn't frozen, although it is pretty wet. Planting the trees in mixed batches now so hopefully something will grow. Maybe not the best strategy but frankly, I'm finding it difficult to distinguish between some of the whips!

Blimey, worked all day long and still have about 680 to do... At least we're through the half way mark...

I use those Stihl single doses that make up 5l - probably not the most economical, but I'm not using it every day

Should be done by October Reckon we got about 225 planted today. Most of this morning I was mowing brambles and we're still lugging stuff up from where it was delivered. Only got about 100 stakes left to take up there now (all being done by hand) so should move a bit quicker tomorrow... :fc: Weather was better today anyway - was almost pleasant at times! Should be better tomorrow too

Thorpe trees, but only because they were through the Woodland Trust MOREwoods scheme

Trees arrived yesterday, on two massive pallets... and one small one, which made the task in hand seem vaguely manageable: Wasted little time in planting my first one - a cherry to form part of an avenue (this carpet was in my old house, no, it wasn't a pub): (You can see the end of the hawthorn hedge I planted last month in that photo) Started laying out the main ride up to the spring in the top paddock. At my wife's request, these are all wild cherry too - hoping it'll make a glorious avenue in a few years: At close of play today we'd got this far, losing half the day to bad weather and humping the stuff up into the field, which is all being done by hand as we don't have a tractor and our 4x4's can't make it: In the foreground you can probably see where we've marked out a Scots Pine circle - a bit twee perhaps but apart from another one in the lower field, that's the only formal planting we're doing. The rest is mixed. Mainly planted alder today, with some aspen and cherry mixed in (the blackthorn/hawthorn hedge I planted isn't shown). Going to tackle more alder tomorrow and hopefully plant a hazel coppice and some oak standards

Wow. The two lads I had to help today managed 91 between them. In fairness, the weather this morning was shocking and we had to hump everything up to the site. I reckon they'll do a lot more tomorrow (had to train them first too). I planted 136 in a hedge. Using membrane takes quite a while too Will see how I get on this weekend...