spandit

Splitting it now means you can stack it and leave it to dry rather than having to worry about it later on.

My Ø2 baffle plate melted (at least, it had a bulge in it the size of a tennis ball) and a new one was a lot of money so I just cut out some sheet steel boiler plate that was lying around (it's rusty as anything but doesn't matter). Otherwise quite happy with it. Seal recently came off when we burned a load of toffee that was past its best - it ran down and stuck the door closed!

I'd bet polystyrene cups are easier to recycle and use less energy to manufacture in the first place.

12 hours ago, headgroundsman said:

I have had some success by threading some shoots of hazel through the holes in a plastic plant pot and filling with soil. A year later I cut off below the pots. Good roots!

Good idea

2 hours ago, gary112 said:

Maybe a bit more not much though

More than happy to be corrected if you have a link

1 minute ago, gary112 said:

You probably got a good chance of getting your 3 plants from it but they would only be a £1 to buy anyway

Can buy bog standard hazel for that but cobnut seems to be more expensive

I have a very productive Kentish cobnut tree (that was "power coppiced" a few years ago but which has recovered). Being greedy, I'd like more trees but I'm a tight git so thought propagation would be the way forward.

I've pegged 3 stems down onto pots of soil - haven't split them or used any rooting compound (as per this link:

) - what do you reckon my chances are of having 3 new trees in the spring? I've fenced it off to stop the dogs wrecking the pots (which were quite expensive)

I save all my cherry for cooking on. Don't have any beech but I get by with a mixture of other stuff. Have a lot of ash and oak to supplement the almost unlimited leylandii I have. At the moment, anything that isn't wet from the rain will do!

Mine filled up in a few months but then went right down again (and it's about 15 foot deep!), being almost completely dry the following Summer. I predicted that with all the fissures that had opened in the clay, there would be a massive amount of sediment washed in once the rains started again. It was full to overflowing by last December and despite dropping by a maximum of 6 inches this Summer, it's remained full so has obviously self sealed.

May take a few years but it there's clay in the soil, I reckon it will stay full

On 26/09/2019 at 12:47, AHPP said:

Best protection from rabbits is no rabbits.

I find a polite invitation sent to them at several hundred feet per second generally gets a decent acknowledgement

I've hired a 22 tonne petrol log splitter before - might be an option

All of my hazel is grown in rabbit spirals and they've all developed multiple stems. Once coppiced they'll sprout multiple stems anyway. The small tubes will be fine.

Beautiful but I bet your workshop stinks!

18 hours ago, spandit said:

Normal alder, that's measured at the base, and they're not all like that.d

Doubted myself so took a tape measure to one of them. 24 inches around at the base - that's nearly 8 inches diameter, so I'm not far off. A lot of them snap in the wind it seems, though but it means my prototype forest floor is collecting detritus which must be beneficial for invertebrates

Normal alder, that's measured at the base, and they're not all like that.

5 minutes ago, Commando said:

Hi Spandit, how long did the Alder take to get to 8"?

About 5 years. Most of them have split the tube shelters. Haven't tried stringing my hammock in between them yet as it puts a lot of strain on things but they're probably strong enough

I didn't intentionally plant any birch as I have thousands that have seeded naturally, despite the grass. They're shading the grass out in some places, like a proper woodland.

21 minutes ago, monkeybusiness said:

Planning permission for a pond - what a ridiculous country we live in!!! 

It was the unauthorised engineering works they complained about. The fact they were part of a pond was incidental. That said, it has dragged on and on and is still costing me money

3 hours ago, wrsni said:

Plenty of room for expansion as you say, get the planting spade out! ?

 

My scots pine done the same, that's what they do apparently! So for a year or two I tried straightening them and all sorts of antics, then they became too big to manhandle so I had to leave them but strangely enough they seem to have sorted themselves out.

 

Will you be cutting any alder soon?, I think I'll be cutting a few things this winter for the first, even though it goes against every grain in my body to start cutting down after years of encouraging and trying to nurture growth. The thought of even walking through the gate with a chain saw brings me out in a cold sweat!

I know what you mean about cutting them (even though the alder was planted to provide firewood in the future). Some of the alder is 8" across - astonishing growth. I will take a few down this winter, I think, to see how well they regenerate. Got so much firewood already I really don't need any more.

Saw a squirrel in the woodland today as I was on the tractor mowing the rides - lovely to see. Looking forward to seeing him again, hopefully through a telescopic sight...

On 20/09/2019 at 11:33, difflock said:

Good Lord, tis indeed true that common sense is rather uncommon, and by that I mean that surely, based on your overhead image, common sense could have told the Council Inspector all he needed to know, like the height of the bund and its proportions/likely stability, and more pertinently is there anybody or anything downstream that could be damaged as a result of the bund failure and what was the max volume of likely bund failure discharge over what likely timespan.

Because my cursory inspection from your image cannot establish any likely catastrophic outcomes

They wanted cross sections of how the bund was constructed. A catastrophic failure in the thickest part would flood the house and possibly a couple of the neighbours. It has shown no signs of slumping/eroding and is massively thick at the base (the bottom of the pond being underground anyway). Anyway, they're satisfied with the construction, but the conditions they applied were totally unfair and, in my view, impossible to discharge, so I'm having to pay again to try and vary them. Still threatening with making me fill it in - not sure where all the wildlife or water is going to go...

It's stunning in the sunshine as you can see down about 6 feet now it's cleared. Level has dropped over the past couple of weeks due to no rainfall, by about 6 inches. Last year it was down 12 feet!

4 minutes ago, Big J said:

Given that I'm likely to dig a large pond as soon as we get land, what difficulties have you had with the council? If you don't mind me asking.

I didn't ask for planning permission beforehand so had to apply for retrospective permission. I've now got it (after a lot of reports and hassle), but they imposed a load of conditions on it, including getting a professional ecologist to do a report (which was a few hundred quid). I am now trying to vary/cancel the condition but will have to pay another £234 for the privilege - feels like extortion to me but the fee structure is clearly set out on the planning portal.

One issue I had is that they wanted detailed plans before and after - I tried explaining that because it was a retrospective application, I didn't have plans before and the pond was designed as we went along, in line with the terrain, so didn't have an accurate plan either. I've had to construct a 3D model of the pond, with contours. Most recently I've sent them an 130 page report showing details of every tree I've planted around it (with coordinates to the nearest cm :o). I've had no objections to the pond (only one neighbour can see it) and even the council member who visited said it didn't look out of place. The council drainage engineer who visited said the bund was well constructed but planning applications generally deal with buildings, not ponds, so the framework they use doesn't really fit. For example, I was asked if there was access for the fire department (in case it catches fire?) and was asked how many parking spaces it would generate...

I don't know how remote the land you are looking to buy is - if nobody can see it, then nobody can complain, although there's always Google Earth to snitch on you...

I had a boggy patch of ground so dug a very large hole which has now filled with water. It's about 12' deep in the middle and beautifully clear. Unfortunately, the council did not like the fact that I didn't ask for permission and it's been dragging on for over 2 years now... Not easy to see from this angle but the bank on the bottom left are pretty steep and high. Lovely to swim in (the jetty on the left hand side is now in the water so I can dive in) although the lilies are struggling since the dog keeps trampling them.

Here's a drone picture of some of my woodland. Not as big as yours, although space to expand. The silvery looking trees on the left of the photo are osier viminalis but the bulk of the trees you can see are alder, which have done really well. Towards the bottom left there is a plantation of 120 basket willow plants (almond willow, salix triandra). The circle is scots pine but they keep falling over and I don't know whether I'll end up with an elegant ring of them in a few years, especially as they're difficult to mow around

Beautiful. That's why I bought my drone so I could see how well my woodland was doing

Interesting. Seen these on a few of mine and presumed they were flowers like the ones you get on hazel