peds

Long term I'll be laying what I can, gradually removing the goat willow and replacing with something nicer (except for the ones pressed into service as fenceposts), and planting new hedging from cuttings and air layering over the next few years. A quick fence is needed because the neigbouring sheep are returning in a couple of weeks. Not that bothered about the aestheics of it, and I actually quite like the look of a gnarled old hawthorn growing over the wire attached to it. If any of them do come down eventually, the lower bits of stem with shreds of wire in them are destined to be habitat creation rather than firewood. Sure I'll crack on then, thanks for the advice.

The neighbours are moving back in in a few weeks after spending the winter downvalley, so it needs to be sheep and donkey proof by then. I'll definitely be trying to hedge some of it long term, great idea.

...is obviously a pretty bad idea. But what if I really want to? I've got to fence in three sides of my property, which is bordered by mature trees and the next in line, waiting for their turn. Goat willow, ash, alder, hawthorn, a few birch, every two to four metres, with a few bigger gaps. About 200m in total. Obviously I can plug holes with posts, but having just spent another 200m of fenceposts, I'd rather keep costs down. I do have access to a load of hazel sticks. Could someone tell me exactly why I'd be a fecking eejit for considering it. I'm not short of firewood, and I'm happy to cut around the staples anyway if they ever need to come down.

Given the choice, I use fresh as possible for paths, and aged for mulching beds and trees. But it's no big deal, fresh chips turn into aged if you just wait a while, and any nitrogen theft can be mitigated by feeding the soil with nettle tea. Conifer and beech chips are great for mulching fruit bushes, particularly blueberries, to keep the soil acidic.

Three (or more) large rocks, one at each end on one side and a third in the middle on the other side. Won't rot away like driven fenceposts, the right kind of rock looks lovely, and it adds another feature and potential habitat from a biodiversity point of view.

Please see other posts about my aversion to unnecessary burning due to being a smelly hippy. Anyway, I hired in a proper chipper for the day. Still got my pocket chipper on call, but I'd have been there for weeks clearing everything, especially after the excavator dragged my neat rows of lined-up butt ends into a few tall heaps. Money well spent.

Physics and safety aside, don't forget that you get a cooler photo for your social media presence if you leave a nice fat top above your anchor, and launch it away from you when it breaks free as you snip it. This is assuming your groundie can get a decent camera angle and doesn't have fat fingers.

If it takes a month to work... just cut the stem and walk away, put the poison back in the drawer, and do your local ecosystem a huge favour.

I understand... that's very helpful. Thanks. The whole fence is in line with the new lane so that could easily be a solution.

We've got a digger on site doing drains and a new lane right now, he's tapping in all posts on his last trip down the lane to the road. But yeah, I've got shoveholers as well, and a few other tools. I know a few folk with livestock, and I was planting forestry a while back with a pair of lads who do fencing, so I'm sure I can borrow some tensioners from somewhere. Interesting to hear your opinion on barbed wire at ground level, I suppose fencing is like beekeeping... ask 10 beekeepers for advice and you'll get 11 different opinions. If I end up doing a shit job I'll get my two fencing friends to have a go, and they'd probably toss it out in an afternoon, but at the moment I've got more time than money and it's a skill I'd like to learn.

Roger that, all understood. Barbed wire on the ground instead of straight? I guess that'll stop even the most determined of wee beasties trying to tunnel out. I've already got loads, that'll actually be cheaper than buying a roll of straight. I'll find a tensioner from somewhere then. Cheers.

If anyone wants to take a break from the pointless needling in this thread, I'd be grateful for any advice to a first-time fencer. I'm doing 150m for my neighbour next week, with a couple of gates, one in the middle, one at an end. I've just read about diagonal struts, they seem simple enough to do. Will I need to borrow a tensioner for this distance, or will I manage it by hand? I'm thinking it'll be a strand of plain wire just above ground level (or not), 5 strand sheep wire, then two strands of barbed wire. Any dos or don'ts are much appreciated.

If you are in no major hurry, just cut the stem and walk away. Wait a month, then pull it down. If you need it done now, then cut the stem a month ago. Using chemical is pointless, but I would say that because I'm a smelly hippy.

In other news... I have 20-odd blackcurrant and redcurrant cuttings taken last year just about to wake up. This morning I fed the overwintering things in the tunnel with a splash of seaweed and nettle tea, seeing as we've got about a week of good weather predicted for here I figure they'll make the most of it. I have garlic, leeks, chard, salads and a few oriental leaves, and a patch of 3-cornered garlic.

Don't worry, they've got enough going on in their lives. They had the run of the vegetable garden for the winter until a few weeks ago, and as well as everything in their run, they have a few dedicated chard, spinach, and brassica plants to themselves, and they get everything that is manky, bolted or otherwise finished. Plus any weeds and slugs. (Their run covers 3 sides of this little polytunnel too, so they are on constant slug patrol for me, which is very kind of them.)

Sounds interesting, I'd also love to see a dedicated thread about your orchard work. It's something I'm hoping to get involved with in the future.

No, I'm a smelly hippy with an aversion to unnecessary burning, and a desire to keep as much of the raw materials for use as possible. Everything that I'm taking out of my current nemesis, just over 100m of overgrown hedge (hawthorn, holly, goat willow, ash) is being kept for firewood, turned into woodchip for mulching in the garden and polytunnels I'll be building over the next year, kept aside for filling the bottom of raised beds hugelkulture style, or, and you'll laugh when you hear this, being taken apart by hand with pruning saw, loppers, and secateurs, and placed back into and on top of the soil that they came out of in the first place, after it's been moved a meter and a half to the east, ready for planting a new hedge in. Incredibly valuable slow-release fertiliser. Also, a lot of the hawthorn I'll be snipping into easy lengths and weaving through the sheep wire fencing I'll be putting up, to provide a bit of a windbreak for the establishing whips I'm dropping in the ground in a few weeks time. I expect all 100m of it to take me about three or four days.

I've got a good few hundred kilos of hawthorn sat in a heap in the middle of a field to deal with, and I'm not sure I've got the space to hide it all, so I'll definitely have to invest in the welders gloves. I guess the only acupuncture-free solution is to drop five figures on a much bigger chipper and have a fella feed it in with a grab on an excavator. But then I'd have to find something else to offer a temporary distraction from the other pains in my life.

That might be a solution... get in touch with a decent chainsaw carver, turn it into a priceless work of art, split the profits. Giant Lion Carved From Single Tree By 20 People In 3 Years Becomes The World's Largest Redwood Sculpture | Bored Panda WWW.BOREDPANDA.COM A giant wooden sculpture of a roaring lion now stands proudly in a Central Chinese city square, and the journey it took to get...

Hawthorn comes in many different shapes and sizes of course, it'll chew up long straight bits with no kinks no problem at all, but as soon as you add a bend or or two you have to manipulate it a lot more to get it down the tube, and the fact that it's a thorny bugger makes the wrestling a lot harder. The problem definitely isn't on the machine's side, it's a human issue. A heavy wax jacket and welder's gloves would fix it. Alternatively, dig a little deeper and find the cheapest option with feed rollers. This machine is fed only by gravity and elbow grease.

No no, not true. They are here come rain or shine.

I made a short time-lapse earlier of using the machine, but I can't upload it direct to here. I'll see if I can get it up elsewhere. Anyway, if you are chipping nothing but soft and brittle goat willow all day, then this wee chipper works like a dream. Anything with a bit of bite like holly or hawthorn though, honestly I'm just going to snip it up and poke it under a hedge. With no feed rollers, getting anything other than perfectly-prepped sticks in is a big of a physical affair. But big, straight sticks that you can wrestle into submission, she goes just fine. I've been dropping in 10cm logs and they get chewed up without the machine slowing down at all. It gives much smaller chip than bigger chippers, see photo of hand for scale. The chip will break down faster of course, meaning paths etc. will need to be topped up more often. I've gotten around the chip shitter being too low to the ground by using it on a pallet and shooting it into an old dustbin I found buried under the hedge, which then gets tipped into the wheelbarrow. Obviously this arrangement looks a bit too jonky for any professionals to consider, unless you can buy a fancy orange bin and shtick a Husqvarna logo on it or something.

Very helpful, thanks for that Dan.

Noone is willing to put a price tag on it? Feel free to highball it if you want!